Kováč's first book of poems came as a surprise to the literary community and immediately aroused interest in the author and his poetry. He introduced himself as a sensitive and original poet confirming these qualities in his later books. He breaks reality into numerous surprising images with associative impact. When building
a verse he seeks his own shape with daring structure and modern architectural form. He certainly has a sense for short cuts, knowing how to create the right atmosphere and to evoke a ravishing, even devastating experience using simple means. His vision of things and the world is very rich. The issues are diverse. He goes back to his childhood years during the Second World War (concentration camps, execution of prisoners, deportations of Jews, children suffering, drastic war images, social problems, the reality of everyday life etc.) seeing them through a strong desire for justice. The past is relived painfully in symbolic poetical abbreviation. Even in later books the author still dwells on themes of the Slovak National Uprising, war, his childhood and homeland enriched by his personal experience in time and space. He seeks ethical and aesthetic values of human life that were approved and confirmed by time. Eventually he finds them in poetic revival of the past expressed in national tradition, which he actualises for the present and the future. The work of Mikuláš Kováč brings autonomous and original expression into Slovak poetry discovering, at the same time, possibilities of poetry in such unpoetical themes as war and violence. Human dimensions of the often inhuman life conditions are the essential feature of his poetry.
Viktor Timura
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