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Stella Vinitchi Radulescu was born in Romania where she first published poetry and literary criticism. She received a Ph.D. in philology from the University of Bucharest, and also holds an MA in French from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently, she is Lecturer in French at Northwestern University. Her particular area of interest is 20th century French literature and she has presented scholarly papers on Camus, Ionesco, S. John- Perse and Beckett.
She is the author of twelve collections of poetry published in Romania—the last one, Variatiuni pe o umbra (2003). In the United States, she has published, My Dream Has Red Fingers (2000), From Heaven With Love (2003), Self Portrait in Blue (2005), Last Call (2007) and more recently, in France, Terre Interrompue.
She writes poetry in Romanian, French and English, and her poems have appeared in a variety of American and international literary magazines, including, Seneca Review, Shade 2006 –Anthology, California Quarterly, Karamu, Pleiades, Sulphur River Review, Louisville Review (United States), Poésie sur Seine, Florilège, Comme en Poésie, Cahiers du sens (France), Inédit Nouveau (Belgium), Cahiers de Poésie ( Luxembourg), Vatra, Romania Literara (Romania), Passerelle ( Québec).
She is the winner of two international poetry prizes for her poetry in French, the grand prize for free verse poetry in the 2006—Poésie sur Seine—international competition, and the first grand prize “Art et Poésie” 2007 ( awarded by SPAF – Société des poètes et artistes de France) for her poetry book “Terre Interrompue.”
“Her poems—metaphysical thought, molecules drowning in stars—are strong, mysterious, cryptic, surreal, ethereal, dangerous, bursting with authority, operating at a ghostly spiritual intuitive level...,” writes David Dodd Lee, poet and editor, on the back cover of her most recent chapbook, Last Call.
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French
version
Je Dirais Neige
le vert s'est fait noir
le noir blanc je dirais neige -
mais le mot est pareil
au sang:
il se cache s'il n'y a pas
de blessure
blessure au milieu du silence
je dirais au milieu
du coeur
mais le coeur s'est fait son
pauvre musique vicieuse entre
la vie et la mort
(reprinted from "Les Cahiers de Poésie," Editions POIETES, Luxembourg) |
English
version
I Should Say Snow
the green turned to black
the black to white
I should say snow—
but the word is like
blood:
doesn't show unless there is
a wound
a wound in the middle of the silence
I should say in the middle
of the heart
but the heart just turned
into a sound
a vicious helpless music between
to be and to die |
Romanian
version
Octombrie
Pãmântul viseazã oameni
si geme
câini de zãpadã latrã în noi
ca si cum luna-
vezi-ti durere albastrã de drum
s-au cocosat orele
de-atâtea rugãciuni
pãmântul viseazã fructe de aur
cãzând
un strut doi struti de sperantã—
ca si cum-
dã-mi mâna dã-mi glasul
sã trecem
silaba asta de fum
pe câmp
brândusele singurãtãtii
toamna ca o bivolitã
mãnâncã
din inima asta de scrum
(reprinted from "Variatiuni pe o umbra," Eminescu Publishing
House, Bucharest) |
English
version
October
The Earth is dreaming people
and moans
snow dogs are barking in our hearts
as if the moon...
Go your way blue sorrow
blue pain
these hours are hunchbacked
by so many prayers
the Earth is dreaming golden
big fruits
one bird two birds of hope
under the lost moon
Give me your hand give me your
voice I have to pass
this smoky dusty word
Pansies of loneliness
in the fields
Fall is eating like a bull
from our ashy souls. |
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English
version
In the Middle of the River
1.
In the middle of the night there is a night,
It has long, waving, burning hair like yours,
Eyes color of dreams,
It fears light, the flowering into something else—
In the middle of the day there is a day,
You should smell it,
You should touch it,
You should listen to it,
It's your last chance to be alive...
2.
In the middle of the river there is a river
Flowing backward,
From death to life and then to the first day
Where the flight started, where we first met
As intergalactic birds, naked, wounded, bleeding,
Shining...
The seed is in your hands: your mother's eyes,
Your father's face, your child's tender smile.
Who are you, stranger, whose joy rolls on my tongue
Like a bead of fire,
As I look at you, you enter history through my eyes
Or maybe myself multiplied by hundreds
Will be our history:
Ours, ours, slaves of human power
Of gravity, of hunger,
Parts always wanting the whole, whole always
Scattered in parts-
And I might end up in one fluttering wing,
This sound, this bubble bubbling around, ah, it's all waste.
And you are asking: "What did you say?"
I am trying to raise my voice up to your tongue,
To fill up the gap between one heart and another,
I am already a part of my corpse,
A tiny letter in the book you have just closed.
(reprinted from From Heaven With Love, Pudding House Publications, 2003) |
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English
version
Mozart’s Requiem
"An ear, cut off, is listening.”
-Paul Celan
They have lived a stone life, a star life, a rat life,
tears wiped out by the Siberian wind, packages wrapped
in despair,
moved from prison to prison, from age to age.
We use to bury our people, carve a cross, play Mozart's Requiem,
they started a new era of solitude
and loss,
their corpses our trees, our roads,
tones of blood evaporating in the air we breathe,
corpses lost in the tide of all times, high tide
on our empty beach, the grave
we don't deserve, the thoughts we never thought.
Most of you don't even know why and for whom you are crying,
don't see their faces, don't hear their trumpets
when they happen to pass by your door.
(reprinted from SHADE 2006 –Anthology, Four Way Books, 2006) |
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