For readers who have facility with the Czech language, HOST has recently published an enjoyable anthology of The Best Czech Poems of 2010, a collection of poems published last year and gleaned from a number of books and journals. This 143 page anthology, expertly edited by Miloslav Topinka and Jakub Řehák, provides a cross section of contemporary Czech poetry, including the work of Jaromír Typlt, the late Viola Fischerová, Petr Borkovec, Martin Langer, Petr Král and Pavel Ctibor, among many others.
The poems in the collection vary in style, from prose poems to visual poems, although most are written in free verse and virtually none of them follow strict rhyme schemes. Topinka begins his introduction by quoting an article written in 1913 in the Viennese journal Torch, in which the writer describes the number of poets who congregated in Prague’s Cafe Arco. Apparently in those days poets in Prague were as common as muskrats.
Topinka goes on to say that in the last 100 years, that profusion of poets has spread to other Czech cities, not to mention the Internet. Along with those developments, an increasing number of foreign poets from around the world have settled in Prague, making the city a place of unprecedented cosmopolitan poetic activity. One hopes that collections like The Best Czech Poems of 2010 will inspire English-language poets in Prague to take more interest in their Czech colleagues, and perhaps even to begin the arduous, imperfect work of translation.
American poet Robert Frost famously wrote “Poetry is what is lost in translation.” He was wrong; poetry is found in translation.
I would say poets in Prague are still as common as muskrats.