Reading Holub, an advantage poets may have when using science, as opposed to an only-science scientists, is control. Holub says in his essay that poets use words "as a means of ordering, controlling, and consolidating the uttered experience of which they are themselves the main part." Poets then get to make what they want of the science, whereas scientists may THINK that they themselves may not do that, because to do so would be unscientific.
I found myself unable to focus on Holub's poems first time around. Maybe I'll get 'em next time. I found myself caught on particular phrases, which may be a disease within itself. In Teaching About Diseases I liked the idea of puppets having diseases and also wearing boots. In Vanishing Lung Syndrome the final stanza was solid, "lost in a landscape / where only surgeons / write poems. I was brought back to the title and I'm not saying surgeons cannot be poets, but surely they are not the only ones and if poets are disappearing then poets are the lungs with which we BREATH. Which brings me back to the first stanza, a fantastic image and the whole idea is pretty much tied together nicely with a bow. Why does the science of this work? I think the science of this is cool, but it is the poetics of this poem that makes it worth anything.
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