Customer Reviews (1)

Poems which help you see in a new way
In his excellent introduction to this volume A. Alvarez describes how Holub combines the scientific and literary in his own unique way. Holub was a pathologist and among the poems I found of most interest are those in which he makes an analogy between microbe life and human existence. Holub's poetry has a clarity and brightness about it. His lines are short. He likes repetition of a phrase, and uses this device effectively. He has a quality of bringing out of left- field a wild conclusion, a sudden surprise , a shift in perspective. The translation of his poems by Ian Milner and George Theiner reads wonderfully.
I cannot really measure the value of Holub as a poet. What I can say is that the poems , or at least some of them are of great interest and perception. They help you see in a way which you did not see before.
My favorite in this collection follows:

IN THE MICROSCOPE

Here too are dreaming landscapes,
lunar, derelict.
Here too are the msses
tillers of soil.
And cells, fighters
who lay down their lives
for a song.

Here too are cemetaries
fame and snow.
And I hear murmuring ,
the revolt of immense estates. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume of poetry and prose published by Bucknell University, ... Read more

Product Description
Volume of poetry and prose published by Bucknell University. ... Read more

Product Description
Miroslav Holub was hailed as a major figure in East European literature and praised for a sensibility, permeated by scientific thought, that bridged dangerous gaps and specious divisions in human knowledge. This collection's ten-page title poem, Holub's longest, is among the major long poems of the second half-century. The theater pieces and the puppet sequence, filtering social and psychological issues through the lens of playhouse and fairytale, are brilliant literary experiments. This volume, appearing here for the first time in any language, marked a milestone in the development of one of the great European masters.

Miroslav Holub (1923-98) was one of Czechoslovakia's most original and prolific poets, and also a world-famous immunologist with more than 150 published scientific papers to his credit. ... Read more

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Cultural Writing. Essays. Fiction. Poetry. Drama. This anthology celebrates the energy, endurance and humor of Czechoslovakia. From The Good Soldier Svejk to the writing of Milan Kundera, from 1914 to 1989, this selection gives the country's story in the words of its novelists, poets and dramatists. Here is the unofficial view of the many outside interferences the country has suffered, and here the writers' own interference in the status quo. Chosen mainly from the translated work of writers at one time banned or exiled, this collection offers a unique introduction to Czechoslovak history and a flavor of its literary wealth. ... Read more

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Better known as Czechoslovakia's finest poet, Miroslav Holub is also a superb prose stylist. The fifty-five `essaylets'...each forty-three lines in length, first appeared in the magazine Vim. Adhering to the magazine's strictures on length, Holub invented a new genre that imposes additional limits on the arts limits that are spatial, social, political, and spiritual...[The essaylets] touch upon every aspect of man's search for morality in a hostile world and are as poignant and probing as his poetry."" - World Literature Today. ""Holub is actually well known as a scientist, too, and it is this, along with his awareness of the political realities around him, that save his work from being the sort of studied vapidity that emasculates so much Western verse."" - Booklist. ... Read more