Liviu Campanu, translated by Patrick McGuinness
On my way to school on Thursday, I was completely excited by reading Campanu's poems in PN Review 192. A Romanian poet (1932-94) exiled by the Ceausescu regime to Constanta (Roman Tomis that also hosted Ovid's exile), he wrote about place and placelessness in a voice at once witty, regretful and lyrical. The poems from The Ovid Complex (1989) are astonishing. The combination of thought and sight: Drift is what they worship here: on the cast iron shore the sea is rolling its dice and the heron, the only bird who cane make flying look difficult, hauls himself up on a ramp of wind like a geriatric on his stairlift. (from VIII) The knotty self-questioning expressed in self-irony: "I test my weakness... against some idea of fortitude, my impatience against the stoic or the socialist ideal... and I'm happy enough to be found wanting, or would be if I knew what it was I wanted. (from I) I have bought McGuinness's book Jilted City , which contains these t...