'Hanzlik's poetry, more particularly his early poetry, is characterised by controlled savagery, by a smouldering anger, though balanced and held in check by a note of lyricism and often indeed of tenderness. He is a master of the medium-long poem: in his earlier collections were often evocations of classical or Biblical subjects (though with an entirely modern and often topical subtext), while some of the more recent ones are meditations on casual topics, such as his stamp collection, a news item about a scientist's Nobel Prize, or a flight of fighter aircraft overflying his home on Air Day. At a time when so much Czech poetry is either politically declarative or traditionally escapist, Hanzlik's unmistakable individual voice, bruising though it may be, is refreshingly new.' - Ewald Osers 'The fluency and energy are unmistakable, and at the centre of the poems there is a real and difficult subject: political violence. Killings, mutilations, stiflings, beheadings occur in poem after poem, and are connected in some way with people in authority. Hanzlik uses dramatic monologues by invented or legendary or historical personae.' - Graham Martin, from his preface