“Reynek’s career as a poet, translator, and artist spanned and transcended the most horrific political turmoil in modern European history. Now his poetry and art are celebrated in a handsome volume. . . . [Quinn’s] lyrical renderings delicately dismantle many preconceptions of how a Central European poet ought to sound. . . . Beautiful and revelatory. . . . Quinn’s rendering of Reynek’s poems appears effortless, but it has in fact been a labor of love for many years. The result feels more like transubstantiation than translation.”

Michael Tate | Los Angeles Review of Books

"This most recent addition to the Modern Czech Classics series offers a selection of poems and prints by Reynek—who worked as an author, translator, and graphic artist—that spans five decades, from the early 1920s through early 1970s. . . . Reynek took the pastoral as his great theme, and Quinn’s deft translations alluringly echo the environmental emphasis of some of his own poems. . . .  A unique and welcome addition from a publisher that has done much to bring the works of Czech authors to a wider readership through its thoughtful and attractive editions. "

Meghan Forbes | Words Without Borders

"From Karolinum Press’s Modern Czech Classics series comes a compilation of Reynek’s art and poetry that will introduce a new audience to the influential Czech author."

Rachel Cordasco | Book Riot

“Goats, spiders, infernal roosters; a reddening sun, emerging florets; hayricks, byres, windows, rakes; Advent, Christmas; Job and Esau; the drama of sacrifice—these are poems attentive to, sprung from, a creaturely world subtended by a metaphysical presence. In Reynek the reader of English encounters a twentieth-century Czech poet both profoundly Catholic and utterly, subtly modern. Translator Quinn has brought Reynek—himself an estimable translator of Rimbaud, Francis Jammes, Valéry—into an English aligned with the caretaking apparent directness of Frost, of Edward Thomas; other readers may hear here something of an Englished Georg Trakl.  . . . . There is a simplicity here as if of old ballads, folk songs—as if: this is the simplicity of the profoundly pondered, distilled, parsed, and pared. . . . In these selected poems we encounter an informed attentiveness, a sensibility alert to the signs and parables which the ordinary endlessly affords. . . . It is timely for Reynek to have made his track into English. His work asks for, and rewards, a deep listening.”

Maureen N. McLane, author of “My Poets” and National Book Award finalist “This Blue”