A Romanian Poem

A Romanian Poem is the compendium of a psychological process: the poems that make up this collection—melancholic and witty, romantic and surreal—are musings on the divine nature of the relationship between growing up and growing old. Angels announce their apparition in a scenery of post-communist transcendentalism, interweaving with personal references and individual memory. A triptych, this book begins with “Tristia”—exploring displacement and the discomfort of the necessarily personal space between East and West—is interrupted by “Peregrinations”—a series of long narrative poems nodding to the tradition of English pilgrim poetry—and culminates with “Nostos”, a denouement and an explosion of feelingas the poet returns to her Arcadia.

she has every chance of becoming the Auden of her time. Her intensity, her
industriousness, her scientific passion, her lively and elemental belief in love, conspire to
round out the Man of Letters. The name of the book is taken from an orchestral work by
Romania's greatest composer, a close friend of Andreea Iulia Scridon's great-grandmother—an opera singer with whom Enescu performed for the King of Romania. Following her debut book, in her second language, Romanian, these poems in her native English tongue
constitute a single whole poem: they find in the glory of an incident a dramatic portrait of
a national character.”

—Ben Mazer

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