Ivan Martin Jirous’s poetry of 1981–1985, which first appeared in the collection Magor’s Swansongs_1 and includes the poems published here, was written during the poet’s longest period of imprisonment, and there is no question today that it represents the apex not only of Jirous’s literary oeuvre, but also of recent Czech poetry. Jirous gained fame as a poet later than he had as the spiritus agens of Czech underground culture and the “artistic leader” of the rock group Plastic People of the Universe.
