Jan Skácel is generally acknowledged as one of the most significant Czech poets of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s he became well known as the author of a highly characteristic genre of poetry, poetry that was based on myth and tradition but that at the same time dealt with the predicament of contemporary man. Skácel also played an important role in Czech literary life as the editor in chief of Host do domu (A Guest in the House), a significant literary and cultural periodical, from 1963 to 1969. Following the Prague Spring of 1968, Skácel was among the many writers whose work was banned from publication in Czechoslovakia, and not until the mid 1980s was he allowed to reemerge in part into Czech literary and cultural life.

Skácel was born on 7 February 1922 in the South Moravian village of...