Poems Before & After: Collected English translations

by Miroslav Holub

Overview

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. Poems Before & After 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). With additional translations by David Young, Dana Hábová, Rebekah Bloyd and Miroslav Holub.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781852247478
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	06/15/2006
Pages:	438
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

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.