Part of Vlado's texts is also focused on working with religious themes. Author specifies his individual relationship to God by a relaxed, self-ironizing contact with the question of belief. This material relationship, although there is a touch of irony in it, is subject to changes, too. Sometime, author stylizes himself into the position of a renegade and a sharp critic of the church hypocrisy, he believes that "catholic priests / are the best experts / on marriage", another time, this relationship has the character of memento, humility, awe emerging from the disharmony with divine principles: "Dead man, who won't come / into the heaven / and won't meet with God, / is called the deceased." Sometimes Vlado is able to get from time to the timelessness, by means of comparison, he will reveal the things which otherwise escape: "... small cross on her body / much more sorrowful / like that mine / which I'm not carrying."
Jaroslav Vlnka
Martin Vlado particularly notices a myth of the end and the beginning, boundary between the reality of world here and of world there which is sharp, but nevertheless it is not visible and recognizable in advance. Difference between hyperbola and myth is not entirely evident, anyway. Myths churn and wash, too, they elevate from an inexhaustible quantity, reorganize the system: they are our human uncertainties. We want to remove them. But is it always good to have everything exactly sorted out, not to have some secrets in reserve, secrets which will only once be revealed, once when it will be necessary? We are the civilization which has reduced the metaphysical moments on common statistics. We have systematized everything what was possible to systematize, but are we better, do we have more space, are we happy? It is a question on everlasting polemics. Happiness is to come again into a dialogue after isolation. Happiness is, after having gained identity, to be able to get out of loneliness and give it to play.
Martin Gajdoš
It is not necessary to understand his texts down to the last detail, to understand them completely, to name and dissect in detail the interactions of a lyrical subject with surroundings and with itself in order to discover some "great" conclusions and unexpected results. Vlado is a poet of the tense silence, expectation and imperceptible action. His poems are like the small compact stories – they have always been like this.
Marián Grupač
Martin Vlado managed to depict in a short space the atmosphere of things, scenes, stories which he experienced, heard and saw. Vlado is a poet observer. He puts the texts into the home setting. He discreetly uses words like front chamber, spirits, gammers, milk, pub. These words are not the foundation stones of a text, but they exactly fit into their places and put the finishing touches to the atmosphere. Vlado does not analyze. He does not ask or answer, but states, although sometimes he offers the options. He does not untangle the questions, does not solve the problems. Vlado does not give the points or instructions. He enriches the ends of poems by sometimes even bizarre pictures: "she whom you will meet / this very day / doesn't like / the strawberries in january" (He talks about death.) These "points" sometimes give an absurd dimension to poems.
Štefan Chrappa
Native of Košice Martin Vlado was born five years later than his compatriot Jozef Urban, but he didn't begin to publish his first collections until the late nineties when Jozef Urban's poetic career drew to an end. His poetics is an antipole of Urban's poetics; it is not based on metaphor – expressive metaphor or on expressive choice of words. He is not a type of poet like Urban who "does not accept the flowers, only the fireworks on stalks". He does not press the time, does not press the plots, he would like to slow them down by perception, meditation, reflexion. He does not forerun, he prefers to be flown around by time and plots in order to be able to better perceive reality, to look under its surface, into its heart.
Jozef Čertík
After some collections of poems (one in authorial cooperation with Peter Bilý), native of Košice Martin Vlado presents himself also as a novelist, by short stories and essays. He touches the inner world of a man who is here alone, in marginal positions, on milestones of his emotional existence. Microscope of feelings, Sunday while of depression and pleasure, slow dying, rebirth of morality – in Vlado's texts you can find anything... He writes by a wild pen variously, his stories are not the same. Short prosaic genres give him freedom when depicting the life poses, situations and destinies. He does not need to bring the uselessness into the text; therefore, he leaves a direct message – impression. Emotional, this narration could be described like emotional, if it were no depth text structure and some layers of correlated motifs.
Peter Rybanský
The poet and (marginally) prose writer Martin Vlado (1959), akin to Ľuboš Bendzák, František Andraščík or Pavol Suržin in terms of expression, published his seventh collection "Oil" (KON-PRESS) last year. Critics usually emphasize his frequent focusing on a distinct sense of a poem. His latest collection is no exception. Most of his poems are based on a text's meaning following naturally, which subsequently forces the reader to re-evaluate it and endows him with a pleasure from a sudden discovery...
Ivana Hostová
In the context of the Slovak poetry Vlado's poetry does not stand for setting out in a new direction; something what especially literary critics and to a lesser extent, readers, expect from each and every book published. The author's poetics of the abbreviation, linguistic or life paradox and introspection are in principle essential poetic tools of poetry. However, it is much more difficult to arouse one's interest using these means. M. Vlado did finally succeed in achieving this; he did find a way of bringing these tools into a functional harmony...
Ján Gavura
Martin Vlado's poetic oeuvre is reminiscent of Š. Strážay's, P. Suržin's and D. Hevier's works. Among the authors of the poetry of the intimacy the poet stood closest to M. Brück, Ľ. Bendzák and M. Hatala. Vlado's poetry could serve as a pars pro toto of one of the most widespread forms of lyric poems at the turn of the centuries as it was received by the general, half-layman-like and layman-like public. Even if Vlado's remarks on the verge of his own life did not enrich our literature with aesthetic or conceptual-psychological discoveries perseveringly, they gave it its period profile in a rather decent manner.
Jaroslav Šrank
Again, Martin Vlado came up with funny and playful poems which deal with literature per se and literary competitions. By its content expression and texts' self-referencing they make an impression of a follow-up to Peter Macsovszký.
Michal Rehúš