Abstract
The paper explores song lyrics in plays written by Jiří Suchý in 2001-2011. The authors seek to identify the features of Suchý's poetics that remained unchanged throughout his career spanning six decades: his linguistic humour has been characterized by lavish rhymes, inventive verse structure and sound, colloquial language and contrasting styles; furthermore, Suchý has continued to employ intertextuality, placing his texts into different contexts, often evoked by association.
However, by comparing his older lyrics with recent ones, we have found the poet has reduced some of his traditional methods: in order to accommodate the tastes of contemporary audiences, Suchý has limited his language creativity, absurd and grotesque humour, and poetic metaphors, while, on the other hand, introducing social-critical references.