{"product_id":"9781780370613","title":"Poems Before \u0026 After: Collected English Translations","description":"\u003cp\u003eMiroslav 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoems Before \u0026amp; After\u003c\/i\u003e covers thirty years of his poetry. \u003ci\u003eBefore\u003c\/i\u003e are his poems from the fifties and sixties, poems written before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: first published in English in his Penguin \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e (1967) and in Bloodaxe's \u003ci\u003eThe Fly\u003c\/i\u003e (1987), with some additional poems. \u003ci\u003eAfter\u003c\/i\u003e are translations of his later poetry, all written after 1968, including not only those from his two Bloodaxe editions, \u003ci\u003eOn the Contrary\u003c\/i\u003e (1984) and \u003ci\u003eSupposed to Fly\u003c\/i\u003e (1996), but also the entire texts of two late collections published by Faber, \u003ci\u003eVanishing Lung Syndrome \u003c\/i\u003e(1990) and \u003ci\u003eThe Rampage\u003c\/i\u003e (1997). \u003ci\u003eWith additional translations by David Young, Dana Hábová, Rebekah Bloyd and Miroslav Holub.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'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\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Miroslav Holub is one of the half dozen most important poets writing anywhere' – Ted Hughes\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'One of the sanest voices of our time' – A. Alvarez\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'He is a magnificent, astringent genius and this volume sings with an oblique and cutting candour, a tubular coolness we must praise again and again' – Tom Paulin\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47177382985968,"sku":"9781780370613","price":13.64,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781780370613_p0.jpg?v=1763711806","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781780370613","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}