"So what’s a heart? I’m hungry! I want to live, desire… Oh, do forgive me maiden, my dearest in the fire! I doze. How tall the fire! The forest, how replete! I weep. What’s father thinking? I eat and weep. I eat!" These verses, written some 65 years ago by a 20-year-old, have long entered […]

In this 12th episode of our journey through Romanian Poetry in English, I will present to you a poet with who’s verse I resonate the most. The rebel and antagonist in me (and there is a LOT of that…) – latches onto his poetry… …initially pigeonholed as a neo-symbolist (by critics like George Călinescu, mainly […]

As a young man, and with many other students and young intellectuals attracted to the nationalistic fervor of the times, he became Member of the Iron Guard and the Legion of St.Michael the Archangel (a right wing, fascist movement which wrought terror and held government for a few months at the end of 1940 and […]

…what do I think of Adrian Paunescu? Let me say just this (and get into huge trouble…). If indeed someone, some excellent anthologist, who understands and loves poetry, AND has utmost artistic integrity – would be allowed to trawl through the thousands of poems of Adrian Paunescu, get rid of all the dross, she or […]

After Mihai Eminescu, there are two or three other poets who people (critics included) might consider in “the silver medal” position for Romanian Poetry – so to speak. And in the ninth episode of Romanian Poetry in English, we will talk about, and recite some poems of, one of THEM – Nichita Stănescu. He was […]

Poet, civil libertarian, anti-Communist, a person extremely dignified and appropriate at all times, a successful politician after the revolution of 1989, a beautiful and envied woman – Author of 26 volumes of poetry – many of them translated in foreign languages. Ana Blandiana shone in a generation of poets, the 1960ies, which contained stellar names […]