SOURCE: A review of Ruce Venušiny, in World Literature Today, Vol. 59, No. 1, Winter, 1985, p. 125.

Below, Lee offers a highly favorable assessment of Ruce Venušiny (Hands of Venus).

Until last October's Nobel Prize announcement, Jaroslav Seifert (b. 1901), one of the best Czech poets of this century, had not had the recognition he deserves due to the official censure he has faced in his country and the paucity of translations abroad. His career spans more than sixty years of sustained creativity, beginning with the avant-garde period of poetism and surrealism and continuing through the present day. The best of Seifert's poetry is represented in this volume, Ruce Venušiny (Hands of Venus), compiled and published by Sixty-Eight Publishers, who are hereby bringing out and preserving another important Czech writer.

Seifert's early poetry displays an appealing lyricism and a recognizably masculine grace. He is a young man in love...