Holub reads and fields questions

In Czech, there is no word for enjoying, poet and scientist Miroslav Holub said. "I am not sure what I really enjoy," he said. "I enjoy maybe writing, or playing tennis, or being in nice company. All the rest I just do because it is my profession or my duty."

And it is this sense of duty that brought Holub to Oberlin Nov. 25, on one of 18 U.S. stops to promote his new book Intensive Care,  a collection of previously published and new translations. Holub and his long-time translator Dana Hábová gave a public reading of his poetry - in both English and Czech - and answered questions posed by the Guest Writer class, which studied his work this semester.

So maybe Holub didn't exactly enjoy his visit. "I'm glad to fulfill my duty," he said. "It's a good feeling to just do what you can to fulfill your duty."

Holub is no stranger to Oberlin. Oberlin College Press is releasing Intensive Care,  and has also released several other collections of his poetry, including Vanishing Lung Syndrome  and Interferon.  He has also been a writer-in-residence several times and acted as director of the creative writing program. In 1982, he came as a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. "I know Oberlin as a town. I know it quite well. Only the students are changing. It is like seeing the water again. The water is new, but the riverbed is the same."

"I liked Oberlin very much. It's almost my hometown in the U.S," Holub said.

While here, Holub said he did his best to teach interesting classes, but added he is not a teacher, but an immunologist specializing in the functions of immune cells and immuno-deficiency states. Not unsurprisingly, scientific references are common in Holub's poetry. Vanishing Lung Syndrome,  for example, is divided into four parts entitled Syncope, Symptom, Syndrome and Synapse.

Science, Holub said, provides him with a useful metaphoric language. "It is wrong to put it that I am writing about science," Holub said. "I am writing essays about science and I am writing scientific papers. Otherwise in poetry I can't use any scientific notions and very few scientific expressions."

"You cannot describe exactly what a poem is about," Holub said. "I am using all I know in the moment and writing all that occurs to me, or all that I feel."

What his training as a scientist lets him bring to his writing, Holub said, is the scientific mentality. He defined the scientific mentality as "skeptical to all plastic and soft notions."

The Czechs as a nation, Holub said, are a skeptical one. He compared the Czech mindset to the American mindset: "Americans are enjoying more and more as times go by and find many things just wonderful . . . . We [the Czechs] don't find too many things very wonderful. We don't have the great American dreams. We just hope to keep our identity and stay as we are."

Holub did not have any general advice for young writers. "Sometimes I try to answer their questions," Holub said. "My only general feeling is that the answers are not so important as the questions are . . . . The personal questions are something which counts. Not many people have real personal questions . . . . The answers may be easy." People must find projects to work on that matter to them, Holub said.

After his tour, Holub said he plans to work on a scientific project and finish a book of essays. But he isn't planning a new book of poetry. "I never plan to write a poem. It must come."