‘Like a glass of vodka infected with blood:’ 2 poems by Angela Marinescu, the matriarch of modern Romanian poetry

Angela Marinescu — whether writing under her real name, Angela Marcovici, or the pseudonym of Basaraba Matei — is a touchstone in contemporary Romanian literature. Born in 1941, she has authored more than 15 volumes of poetry in her transgressive landmark style. Although she published her debut, the poetry collection Blue Blood, when she was 28, the poet’s recognition as a literary giant came late in her career, partly due to the influence she exercised on younger generations of Romanian poets writing in the 2000s. Her confessional, direct verse, and powerful, often dark images, came in contrast with the more opaque and abstract mainstream poetry written during communism. The poems below were translated by American, Bucharest-based poet Tara Skurtu, and were first published in Plume magazine.

Attraction

a literary critic wrote some

thirty years back

i have an inner strength

and would succeed

until the end

to convince

i haven’t convinced anyone

and i have no inner strength

other than when i fight

for nothing like how it is

all poets believe in friends

as they do God

only i don’t believe

and so i fight and don’t have friends,

well, maybe some women

but the story of women

doesn’t count, is something else,

a cold world beyond an even colder world,

and me, i’m frightened by men

as friends, and still

they attract me

like a glass of vodka

infected with blood

Oligophrenia

My throat

pulsates

with pleasure

when I see

true

art

I am

oligophrenic

because I believe in

nothing but

poetry

and oligophrenics

are uninhibited

and throw themselves

into

sex