Liliana Ursu

Born in Sibiu 1940, this poetess brings across the strong poetic tradition which exists in that city for many known as unknown reasons. It certainly attracted Eugene van Itterbeek to that location in Rumania. In a most telling way emptiness is reflected everywhere one goes, but then things are not only in vain, but desparate if as unfortunate as a drowned man. In her poem 'Seascape', she describes that despair as follows:

Seascape

you, the technocrat who killed yourself in an elevator

your only witness an empty beer bottle

while the sea, extending the landscape,

licks our souls trustfully

fed up with algae, with bones, with ultimate questions

tonight the world's brain rises

carnivorously: The Moon!

The lovers whisper

oh no, it's a coin rolling out of the pocket of the drowned.

That emptiness referred to with regards to an empty beer bottle being the only remaining witness says already a lot about the lack of proof. There is also a weird form of diction in the first sentence to make sure nothing is sure, for the "the technocrat who killed yourself" is not the one who killed himself. But nothing allows an anticipation of that ending with a coin rolling out of the pocket of the drowned man. He must have been brought ashore while there lingers this perception of a sea extending the landscape.

Bait

The boy keeps his fishing bait

in his grandfather's cigarette case.

Inside it, within its faded colors, are mingled

the battle front, the love, the nerves which surrendered,

which propelled the moon into the emptiness of the lake.

Patiently, the boy is waiting for the fish

while the cigarette case

tipped open in the grass

is filling up with dew.

There is a definite touch of Feminism audible in her poems, but it may as well be a self critical reflection as to what may be expected from a poetess, equally a beautiful woman.

Contre Jour

„A woman made this film

against

the law of gravity“

Adrienne Rich

My heart to the wall

in the room with plastic flowers

with my body shut in your body

like a divine wound

only my head against the back-lighting

and you don't recognize it any more

and you hurry somewhere else

to another body.

Title is as you Like

Of a beautiful woman you suspect

Almost anything

Except poetry

By tradition women poets are ugly

Otherwise you can't believe in them

Art requires selflessness, solitude, crises and complexes

Glasses with very thick lenses and of course

Teenage acne as a sign of purity

And of intensive dreaming within the confines of four walls

A beautiful poet you feel obliged to flirt with

To polish her verses

To suggest other fields of work

And besides, beauty impresses

Only stupid fools

She makes the critics more cynical, more suspicious

More finicky.

And when we are all a hundred years old, if any of us lives that long,

At least we'll be read carefully

And perhaps even accepted

When all women become equal.

Source: Focuri pe apa - 7 poets from Sibiu (1992) Bucharest: Cartea Romaneasca, p. 120 - 141

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Liliana Ursu