My heresies : poems / Alina Stefanescu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stefanescu, Alina, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Romanian Americans--Poetry.

Romanian Americans.

Families--Poetry.

Families.

Life--Poetry.

Life.

Women--Poetry.

Women.

Love--Poetry.

Love.

Genre:

poetry.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

101 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, [2025]

Summary:

"Riven by the tension between hagiographies, utopias, belief, longing, and grief, the poems of My Heresies catalog a personal and familial history originating in Bucharest, Romania and landing in Birmingham, Alabama. Whether through sardonic takes on old Bible myths or homage paid to French-Romanian poet Paul Celan, Stefanescu's poems are laden in subtext, in imagery sometimes abstract and lush, at other times stark and shocking. My Heresies probes the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, and the result is a hauntological mapping of life, love, family, and womanhood."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Byline, be sky

I. Tonight, as you pace the garden

My father explains why they left me behind when defecting

The home is six hens which never lay eggs

Cosmologies

Sonnet at the ghost commune

I nominate the kudzu to keep secrets

I nominate the linden to continue its service as tree of longing and aromatic futility

Karake duet for eastern bloc defectors

Childhood confession for Zagajewski's "Illustratious Caesura"

Socialization #2: sky in the other language

II. On the sidewalk, something winged it

Bear at Bǎneasa

Poem for the black bird

Ode to something elusive

The Kraków nude

Dear B

, would that you hadn't unlatched the symbols

Mysterium, as engraved on Pope's tiara until the reformation

Evil eye

Light does this exposing

Little things: a ring

Sonnet when called away from ghost commune by howls

III. Infinitive neo-theology

Even the air is violet between us

On the emotional life of angels

Apostrophe on natural numbers

Spondeo, per social media

Indictment for failure to conjugate

Me, to the poem

at the warehouse

I nominate the magnolia as sexiest tree

Why one cloud is kin to not liking

Housemaid's knee

The first carcass is a marital milestone

Self-portrait with flower crown woven from allerfenic weeds

Make me that way

Pavane for fools

Poem in the key of c-sharp minor

Two years after our dog, Pinka, got hit by a car on Halloween and died before our eyes as the kids howled in ghost costumes on the front lawn

"An intense sense of victimization"

After reading the extended family hate mail

heretic / relapse / apostate / idolator

Revelation 18:24

Loose exegesis

Medea's apostrophe in storm

IV. On the death of the day of the bear

Posthumous journey IV

"And we really didn't know"

Socialization #7: American playground fame for kids

Socialization #12: American playground game for parents

"Every problem cries in its own language"

I wove a wildflower crown of kinned dreads for you

Leaflostness

V. In case Sandra Ungureanu comes over

Viaticum

The dictator's secret censors

A little like Kierkegaard

The first gust of special relativity is weightless

The street's poorest spirit is a poem with too many images

Étude in blue minor

Postcard with scene near the river where Virginia Woolf drowned

We keep driving

Other horses

Sky b-sides

Parousia for my children

In an elevator with Ashbery, crossing stanzas bashfully

Dream of Christina

Alternative index discovered in Franz Kafka's notebooks

Letter with heirloom "pen"

Socialization #23: family art museum visit

Extraordinary premises

Epistle for the man standing on the beach before everything ends

Portrait of couple at fifteenth anniversary

Epiphaneia.

ISBN:

9781956046373

1956046372

OCLC:

1452502459