Červi železa, rez hlíny – Gold Jiří (2022)

Jiří Gold is among the most important yet most overlooked authors of Czech poetry after World War II. This book is a survey of the lifelong work of a member of the strong Hiršal-Gröger generation of domestic experimental creators of concretism, but also of a poet-essayist whose reflections and philosophical inquiries remain continuously relevant. Jiří Gold, for whom poems are 'gaps in silence' (the title of a selection from 1968-85), freely combines the incompatible: a brilliantly executed experiment with a supreme existential lyricism of a dark metaphysical nature. The selection from Jiří Gold's poetic work, Červi železa, rez hlíny, is a cross-section of both his officially published poetry books and his manuscript and magazine-printed texts. The selection is divided into thirteen parts, arranged chronologically: not by the year of publication of the collections, but by the years of creation of the texts included in the collections. In the author's first two collections (Nebe jasně zelené, Minotaurus), the texts are not dated, so the year of publication of the book is indicated in the chapter subtitle; in the following eight collections, the texts are dated, so the years of their creation are provided. The concluding interview with the author was published in the magazine Weles (2007, vol. 12, no. 30-31, pp. 14-23)…