You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

Today I'm honored to have as my guest, Miroslav Holob.

He is the Czech immunologist and poet.

His first book in English of his essays called Shetting Life has just been published by milkweed

editions.

It follows a recent collection of his poetry called Intensive Care, which has been published by the field translation series

of the Oberlin University Press. Now, I've been reading Holub since an essay appeared by Seamus Heaney about his book

Sagittal section, and what fascinated me was that Heaney isolated a diagnostic-like and

scalpel-wielding poet, in a sense, an anti-humanist.

And many of these essays define themselves against the conventions of humanism as a way of

thinking that in a sense refutes reason and embraces a shallow notion of the poetic.

And I wanted to begin by asking you where the rigor of the tone of voice of the poetry comes from.

Well, for me, because of my profession, I am a scientific worker and my mentality.

I am a scientific worker.

So all my energy comes from, actually my mental energy and of course my mental, I would say,

training and education comes from science. And if it is a vigor, I would say, training and education comes from science.

And if it is a vigor, I don't know, but my approach is something with which Alex Comfort labeled as a heart-centered approach.

And as you said, actually, it was very interesting what you said about humanism and

...