This is the best translated and largest edition of poetry by the Czechs' only Nobel Prize–winning writer, Jaroslav Seifert (he won the prize in 1984 and died in 1986). The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving and comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection "the tangible expression of the nation's genius." The Nobel Committee stated that Seifert's poetry "provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man. . . . He conjures up another world than that of tyranny and desolation — a world that exists both here and now . . . one that exists in our dreams and our will and our art."

Seifert was the great poet of Prague, of love, of the senses. His work was unpretentious, lyrical yet irreverent, earthy, charming. Seifert was known for the simplicity of his verse, yet his poems are full of surprises, never what at first they seem. This is a collection of poetry written throughout his life, but focused on the later years.

"Seifert's three great subjects are the beauties of women, art, and his nation.He characteristically celebrates all three within a single poem, although his perpetually thrilled adoration of women registers most powerfully and most winsomely. Perhaps Keats, had he lived to old age, would have become such a poet."
—Booklist

"These are simply marvelous poems ... What I find truly valuable about Osers' translations ... is the way he renders the surprising variety of Seifert's images, and the way that he catches the breathtaking suddenness of the poet's coiled metaphors."
—New York Press