ABSTRACT
Reading poetry that is intimately associated with a given place is sometimes enhanced by acquiring an in situ knowledge of the place. Bold rhythms, heady musicality, and some rhyming spur all this along. In his wise and enlightening preface to Prague with Fingers of Rain, the Czech writer and playwright Ivan Klima points out that "the lightness of verses is stunning. The French surrealist connection is vital because of the unconsciousness-liberating program of Nezval's own poetics. He was one of the first Czech adepts of Andre Breton's ideas, and the Czech surrealist group that he founded in 1934 was the first such group organized outside of France. As Jerome Rothenberg and Milos Sovak report in an informative postface to their somewhat Beat-poetry-like translation, Antilyrik & Other Poems, Poetism was later renamed "realism" by Nezval. One again thinks of the phrase "real movement of thought" in Breton's definition.
