New Issue of ASYMPTOTE - with a ROMANIAN POETRY Feature

From the Editor's Note
The special feature on Romanian poetry mentioned above offers but a small slice of a rich and diverse culture, ranging from the lyrical mastery of Mircea Ivanescu and Denisa Comănescu to the post-surrealism of Gellu Naum (whose poem appears with a recording by experimental band MARGENTO). This feature also includes poet-theorist Bogdan Ghiu; political critics Ileana Mǎlǎncioiu and Mircea Dinescu, whose writings have previously been banned in Romania; as well as rising stars Radu Vancu, Adina Dabija, and Stefan Bolea.
MORE HERE 

Kim Thúy & MARGENTO - A Dialog across Space and Time; Moderated by Maria Balabas

Copyright (c) Fotograf X

 Maria Balabas has interviewed both Kim Thúy (from a small Canadian town, visiting Bucharest) and CT on the phone (in Saigon) on Vietnamese life, culture, and literature in the global age. The "parallel play" resulted in a Radio Romania Cultural show which can be heard on the Intalnirile din biblioteca ta (Encounters in Your Library) blog courtesy of Spandugino Publishers (in Romanian):

Ce și cât știm cu adevărat despre Vietnamul de azi? Întrebarea-nucleu căreia încearcă să-i răspundă Maria Balabaș de-a lungul unui documentar ce face parte dintr-o întreagă serie difuzată la Radio România Cultural sub titlul de Storymania. Documentarul este de fapt un interviu în tandem ce-i are ca protagoniști pe Kim Thúy și CONTINUAREA AICI

HAROLD BLOOM 82

Harold Bloom - several works of whom were masterfully translated into Romanian by Rares Moldovan, Diana Stanciu, or Delia Ungureanu - "this colossus of criticism," turns 82. Let's read again his ever fresh Art of Reading Poetry.

Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative. Figuration is a departure from... MORE HERE

WHITMAN FOREVER

The tireless Bob Holman and Margery Snyder powerfully state on the National Day: 
What better poet to read on the day we celebrate America’s birthday than “the good grey” Walt Whitman? And which better of his poems to read than... MORE HERE

Stephen the Great's Day

(July 2nd) An unparalleled champion of the Anti-Ottoman cause and a luminary of Romanian medieval art - the famous monasteries in Northern Moldova/Bucovina still stand proof of the unique style developed more than half a millennium ago under his reign - has been also evoked in contemporary history as a guardian spirit of the territories at a certain moment lost to the Russian Tzars Empire and later on to the Soviets, provinces  meanwhile wandering in a limbo of "independence" or part of other post-Soviet countries that ignore the elemental right to one's language, culture, and education for the Romanian communities there. Here is Eminescu's "Doina" in the original and in the exquisite translation of the much lamented Corneliu M. Popescu who passed away in his teenage but left behind an amazing number of English renditions of Eminescu's poems.

Courtesy of Gabriel Ditu's blog:

From Tisa to the Nistru's tide
All Romania's people cried
That they could no longer stir
For the rabbled foreigner.
From Hotin down to the sea
Rides the Muscal cavalry;
      [note: Muscal is obsolete Romanian for Muskovite, kept as such by Popescu in his translation]
                                more HERE