Private lines

Honza Šimek' s eighth book, " Private Lines", offers the first look back at his past work, specifically from the years 2016 - 2021.It draws not only from the poetry collections " Advertisement for Comfort", " Mutare omnia" and " Inventura", but also brings a number of new features. After last year' s title " Manuscripts", who devoted himself to pure free verse, readers can once again enjoy the form of song lyrics, which is the author' s, as he himself says, the closest. As with the previous book, " Private Lines" has its own specific design combining the written word and photography. Older texts were revisited by the author, some even newly revised. Anyone who has come across Šimek' s collection " Lighthouse" will recognize that the poet remains true to himself in his play with language (e. g. who looks in the mirror / then sees himself reflected at home) and tries to be precise when rhyming (to charge / to the apartment, with dogs / sepsis, nine in the morning / not ventilated or without pockets / the dog barks). The basic link between the texts is again interpersonal relationships with an emphasis on love relationships (The Woman Who Brought Diamonds or A Fairy Tale for the Brothers Grimm), and again there is a large amount of exaggeration (The Lone Pawn, The Voodoo Doll and others). The author returns to his childhood, for example: in the text The Sixth Jungle Book, Dogs at the End of the War, Against All or Goodbye, Mr. Edit. In many texts, Šimek refers to other works (The Curtains Are Rising, Peter Pan) or people (John Lennon, Ray Charles), enjoys parody (Sigmund Freud, The Phantom of the Pillar or Nothing on the Western Front) or creates humorous neologisms (The Town Surveyor). The new collection " Private Lines" offers the best of the author' s texts from previous years and can be a suitable addition to the older title " Lighthouse" in an electronic library.