This new translation combines five of Ana Blandiana's previous
collections, three of protest poems from the 1980s followed by her two
collections of love poetry.
As one of Romania's foremost poets, and a leading dissident before the
fall of Communism, Ana Blandiana's poetry has become symbolic of an
ethical consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian
governments.
The poems of Predator Star (1985) and The Architecture of Waves
(1990) chronicle a convulsed history and pose the question of how to
resist the terror of history. Clock without Hours (2014) marks a
return to rhyme, as Blandiana attempts a courageous renovation of
traditional verse forms. Her fiercely militant voice - that helped
inaugurate the postmodern idiom in Romanian poetry in 1984 - has
modulated over time into a new tone of forgiveness and renunciation,
expressed in meditations on the fragility and vulnerability of being.
She has also written two collections of love poems which rank among the
most beautiful in contemporary Romanian poetry - October, November,
December (1972) and Variations on a Given Theme (2018) - the second
of these composed after the death of her husband, Romulus Rusan, in
2016.
A prolific and expansive poet, Ana Blandiana constantly re-invents
herself. Her work ultimately reflects on universal issues, on human
existence itself in our 21st-century consumer society.
