On the Contrary and Other Poems by Miroslav Holub

On the Contrary and Other Poems by Miroslav Holub

Miroslav Holub was the Czech Republic’s most important poet, and also one of her leading immunologists. His fantastical and witty poems give a scientist’s bemused view of human folly and other life on the planet. Mixing myth, history and folktale with science and philosophy, his plainly written, sceptical poems are surreal mini-dramas often pivoting on paradoxes. He was first introduced to English readers with a Penguin Selected Poems in 1967. This book presents a decade of new work written since since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, later forming the 'After' part of Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations (1990).

A laying bare of things, not so much the skull beneath the skin, more the brain beneath the skull; the shape of relationships, politics, history; the rhythms of affections and disaffection; the ebb and flow of faith, hope, violence, art-- Seamus Heaney

Miroslav Holub (1923-98) was the Czech Republic’s most important poet, and also one of her leading immunologists. His Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations (Bloodaxe Books, 1990/2006) covers thirty years of his poetry. Before are his poems from the fifties and sixties, poems written before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: first published in English in his Penguin Selected Poems (1967) and in Bloodaxe's The Fly (1987), with some additional poems. After are translations of his later poetry, all written after 1968, including not only those from his two Bloodaxe editions, On the Contrary (1984) and Supposed to Fly (1996), but also the entire texts of two late collections published by Faber, Vanishing Lung Syndrome (1990) and The Rampage (1997). Supposed to Fly – now out of print in its original edition – was an entertaining, illustrated gathering of poems with some prose interruptions drawn from his native city of Plzen, perhaps better known, for its world-famous beer, by its German name of Pilsen. Bloodaxe also publishes The Jingle Bell Principle, a book of Holub's prose pieces.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780906427767
ISBN 10	0906427762
Title	On the Contrary and Other Poems
Author	Miroslav Holub
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	1984-10-25
Number of pages	128
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.