Extra Credit - Week 2 - Sign Inventory of "Vanishing Lung Syndrom" by Holub

Vanishing Lung Syndrome*

*Burke (found on pages 184-185 of the anthology)

-Miroslav Holub, translated from the Czech by David Young and Dana Habova

1.       The references in the poem. Two to writers: “a raven Nevermore” being Poe, of course, and Dostoevsky. I could probably add “Athena” to this if I broadened it from “writers” to famous figures (and then of course I’d have to narrow it at least a little because “famous people” is baggy.)

2.       The onslaught of medical terminology. Similar to Dr. Davidson frequently citing the difference between “skull” and “cranium” in his classes, this one is all “fibrous mass,” “hypertension,” “angiography,” “cyst development,” etc.

3.       The structure: the first stanza cites a particular person and then it shifts into “inside” and each stanza begins with “inside there may be.”

4.       The two middle stanzas begin with a metaphor for sickness: the seas monster and a “huge muteness of fairytales” and then ends with all of the medical jargon. The last stanza, however, also begins with a metaphor but instead switches to “surgeons writ[ing] poems.”

5.       A lot of abandonment, quietness, unfinished acts: “a raven Nevermore that can’t find a bust,” “a muteness of fairytales,” “dead-end road,” “a disappearance of perfusion,” “an abandoned room,/bare walls,” “a disconnected phone,” being “lost in a landscape,” and of course the title “Vanishing Lung Syndrome”