SOURCE: Holub, Miroslav. “A Song Under All Circumstances.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 14, no. 1 (1987): 209-27.

This thorough essay provides careful close readings of Seifert's early, middle, and late work as the author explores Seifert's conception of poetry as song.

“I believe, or, to be perfectly frank, I just assume that what is normally called poetry is one great mystery of which the poet, and indeed every single poet, unveils a greater or a lesser part. Then he puts down his pen or covers his typewriter, turns pensive and towards nightfall he dies. As for instance Nezval.”

As for instance Seifert.

He'd written this sentence in his memoirs, and then he kept his word, in that night from January 9-10, 1986: it is said that he left a half-written poem on his bedside table.

If it were possible to classify poetry, as certain other forms of human behavior, into obligatory and...