Wheel With a Single Spoke

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Winner of the Herder Prize, Nichita Stanescu was one of Romania’s most celebrated contemporary poets. This dazzling collection of poems – the most extensive collection of his work to date – reveals a world in which heavenly and mysterious forces converse with the everyday and earthbound, where love and a quest for truth are central, and urgent questions flow. His startling images stretch the boundaries of thought. His poems, at once surreal and corporeal, lead us into new metaphysical and linguistic terrain.Winner of Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award 2013

For those—sadly most of us—unacquainted with this brilliant post-World War II Romanian poet’s prolific accomplishment, this selection should prove a revelation. During a historical period of all-too-familiar repression and enforced orthodoxy, his work surged off the page with that liberty only the most gifted and courageous artists possess, giving the lie to the lies around him, and the slant truths of poetry to his listeners. —Michael Palmer

Nichita St?nescu blasted open the prison gates of Socialist realism in Romanian poetry, and all of us rushed out, reveling in the freedom he gave us. His poems display an astounding brilliance that time has not tarnished. These splendid translations by Sean Cotter will introduce English speakers to a universal genius. —Andrei Codrescu

At the time I started writing, about thirty years ago, I was obsessed with Romanian poetry. Today, I still think that St?nescu is one of the most important poets of the 20th century. —Semezdin Mehmedinovic The greatest contemporary Romanian poet. —Tomaž Šalamun

St?nescu has a gift for creating active, startling images. . . In Wheel With a Single Spoke … St?nescu is at his best; he examines the nature of time, space and geometry, and in the friction between science and lyric impulse, produces some of his most beautiful lines. We’re lucky that, nearly thirty years after his death, his voice still comes through, clearer than ever. —Words Without Borders

For a poet who is thought of as one of the defining Romanian voices of the mid-20th century, St?nescu is poorly represented in English … Archipelago’s fuller treatment is long overdue. St?nescu is one of the poets who broke through the socialist-realism sound barrier and propelled Romanian poetry into new spheres. He has been revered for decades in Romania as a great voice and it is our considerable good fortune that Cotter has helped us to see why. —The Arts FuseNichita Stanescu (1933–1983) was the most beloved and groundbreaking Romanian poet of the twentieth century. Stanescu transformed Soviet-style aesthetics from within, infusing the tangible world with a metaphysical vocabulary all his own. Stanescu received the Herder Prize in 1975 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1979.

Sean Cotter’s translations from the Romanian include Liliana Ursu’s Lightwall and Nichita Danilov’s Second-hand Souls. His essays, articles, and translations have appeared in Conjunctions, Two Lines, and Translation Review. He is Associate Professor of Literature and Literary Translation at the University of Texas at Dallas, Center for Translation Studies. Cotter’s translation of Mircea Cartarescu’s Blinding is also available from Archipelago.In Praise of People
From the point of view of trees, the sun is a band of heat, people – a terrible emotion . . . They are the wandering fruits of an even greater tree.
From the point of view of stones, the sun is a falling stone, people are a tender pressure . . . They are motion added to motion and light you can see, from the sun.
From the point of view of air, the sun is air full of birds, wing beating on wing. People are birds never before seen, with wings ingrown
that beat, hover, glide, within an air more pure: thought.CA

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