Oberlin College Press

Miroslav Holub

VANISHING LUNG SYNDROME (translated by David Young & Dana Habova)

Paper $10.95 (ISBN 0-932440-52-5) Cloth $19.95 (ISBN 0-932440-53-3)

Miroslav Holub's first new collection after Interferon is organized around a series of medical metaphors. The contents are darkly witty and mordantly accurate: they document the ignorance, folly, and brutality abroad in our world, most notably in Czechosolvakia before the November revolution of 1989. They also brim with tenderness, humor, and occasional gleams of hope.

Published jointly by Faber & Faber in Britain and our series in the U.S.

LA BREA

In the tar pits
through the ages
writhe the bones
of sixteen hundred wolves,
twenty mastodons
and one Indian girl
somebody killed
and tossed into
the black bubble of time.

Hence the presence
in history's fluid magnet
of death's head-splitting itch,
teeth falling out,
astounded mastodon trunks,

and birdsong

from the day
she waded through grass,
not knowing what lay ahead.

--Miroslav Holub
translated by David Young & Dana Habova