SOURCE: Rossel, Sven H. “Ole Hyltoft and the Neorealistic Trends in Contemporary Danish Literature.” World Literature Today 57, no. 1 (winter 1983): 17-21.

In the following essay, Rossell argues that the poetry of Ole Hyltoft is marked with sharp political satire examining the ideologies of Capitalism and Marxism, and that many of the views expressed in his writing evolved during his years as a critic and journalist.

Life is so many-sided: poetic, criminal, full of love, taunting.

Ole Hyltoft

When Klaus Rifbjerg (see BA 49:1, pp. 25-28), the writer largely responsible for the growth of modernist poetry in Danish literature during the 1960s, published his collection Amagerdigte (Amager Poems) in 1965, it became evident that a reaction against this experimental and hermetic mode of writing—a mode actually introduced by Rifbjerg himself—had begun. In 1961 his controversial poem Camouflage had caused bewilderment and indignation. The public had fastened upon the complete lack of...