Book Signing Events and Excerpts from Speeches/Lansări si fragmente din discursul vorbitorilor
Bucharest — June 5, 2005 (with Vasile Andru and Titus Popescu, book launching event, “Mirela: A Paradox“)
Bucharest — June 5, 2005 (with Vasile Andru and Titus Popescu, at my book launching event)
New York –September 21, 2004
Gallery@ 49 (322 West 49th St.) cordially invites you to the launching of Mirela Roznoveanu’s latest books, Born Again in Exile and The Life Manager and Other Stories, Tuesday, September 21, 2004: 6:30 P.M. – 8:30 P.M.
Guest speakers at the event:
William James Austin
Nina Cassian
Annie Gottlieb
Gallery@ 49 (322 West 49th St.) va invita la lansarea ultimelor aparitii editoriale semnate de Mirela Roznoveanu: The Life Manager and Other Stories (proza) si Born Again—in Exile (poezie), care va avea loc marti, 21 septembrie ora 6:30.
“I would like to take the book, The Life Manager and Other Stories (iUniverse, 2004), and send it back to that little girl that I was, to tell me that women can have the greatest of adventures. Because Mirela is an adventurer par excellence. And in this book, the very first story—so many of them begin with meeting a stranger, or starting to talk to a stranger, and then doors open, and worlds open, and abysses open, and you fall in, and you have adventures that you could never have dreamed of.
The first story, the heroine just gets a glimpse into another person’s life, into a man’s life, talking in a coffee shop. And in the last story, “The Life Manager,” going to a restaurant with a stranger opens up worlds of time and space, and really becomes time travel, space travel. I felt like I was going to take off into another dimension. I thought I might be in Warsaw, or Rio, or…And the question really is whether, I’m wondering as I read, has she been in all these places in the flesh, or only in the imagination? She takes us there in the imagination, and it feels as if we are there in the flesh, because of the incredible power of description, the incredible love for nature so sensuous, which is in some ways so much more reliable than the human love always there.
They are magnificent stories. And I admire Mirela so much for making that leap across the ocean. I wrote down some words from one of her stories that I thought were “suspended, vulnerable, and daring.” That’s Mirela. She is like the woman on the flying trapeze. Suspended over the Atlantic. And I admire her so much for having always been ready to take that leap or to let herself be pushed. And I admire her very much for taking the leap to be published here in America, and to fight for her stories. And insist that they be read, and seen, and that they not sink into the ocean without a trace.
The little girl within me is thrilled and convinced that, as she says, “Women are the courageous ones … the most powerful and intelligent beings on earth.” Annie Gottlieb
“Cele mai multe din nuvelele din această carte încep printr-o întîlnire cu o persoană necunoscută şi ciudată. Cu secvenţe din vieţile unor persoane ce intersecteaza personajul principal. În acel moment, noi universuri se întrevăd, abisurile par să se deschidă la picioarele noastre. Cititorul devine martorul unor întîmplări extraordinare ce se petrec în locuri la care nici nu poţi măcar visa. Să fi fost Mirela în acele locuri, în carne şi oase? În orice caz, prozatoarea ne duce acolo şi acum cu puterea imaginaţiei. Devenim martorii în carne şi oase ale acestor întîmplări datorită puterii incredibile a descrierii. A dragostei nemăsurate pentru natură, atît de senzuală încît este mai puternică decît însăşi iubirea, întotdeauna prezentă. Ultima nuvelă, The Life Manager, deschide multiple nivele de timp şi spaţiu, devenind o aventură filosofică în timp şi spaţiu. O admir pe Mirela Roznoveanu pentru saltul ei peste oceanul Atlantic, într-o altă limbă şi cultură... Există în cartea ei o remarcă a unui personaj despre ce înseamnă să fii <suspended, vulnerable and daring> – suspendat, vulnerabil şi curajos. Mirela este asemenea unei femei zburând pe un trapez suspendat deasupra oceanului. Mirela este un aventurier par excellence. Nuvelele ei sunt extraordinare…“ Annie Gottlieb
Annie Gottlieb is the author of Do You Believe in Magic? Bringing the Sixties Back Home (Times Books, Fireside, 1987-8). Coauthor, WISHCRAFT: How to Get What You Really Want, 1979,1983 (backlist bestseller, just relicensed by Ballantine for the third time), A RETURN TO INNOCENCE, 1998 (Regan Books, just released in paperback under new title DEAR PATRICK); principal author, THE CUBE: KEEP THE SECRET, 1995 (still backlisting, over 60,000 copies, 6 translations, bestseller in German), SECRETS OF THE CUBE, 1998 (3 translations). Freelance critic and writer since 1970 for the New York Times Book Review and Op-Ed page, the Nation, the Village Voice, Utne Reader, and nearly every major national women’s magazine, currently “O,” the Oprah Magazine.
William James Austin: “How could I not celebrate Born Again In Exile, given that many of the poems collected in the first sequence, composed in English, are set in the center of the universe, New York City. My town!
The first stanza of the opening poem, “53rd Street,” reads as follows:
My previous and future lives
look like 53rd Street in Manhattan
with its MOMA and at the corner
the startling snobbish 5th Avenue
with Madison Avenue — the savage one — one block away
and further down Park Avenue with bulls running
under its sidewalk.
For me a dead on description of the area, its culture, its surfaces and subways. I read these lines and I am there. In “Golding Lounge” and the title poem, the essences of Washington Square Park and the extended NYU area are similarly evoked.
And this marvelous assessment of hard working New Yorkers riding the subway:
they know what life is about
where the sky is
and where the ground.
In one of those Dirty Harry movies, Clint Eastwood remarks that “A man must know his limitations.” Mirela says it better. Her own limits of observation, I am certain, have yet to be reached.
And all of this is accomplished by way of a disarmingly simple style, as if nothing very important is being said — when, in fact, everything said is crucial to a time, a place, a life. The style holds constant, even when the challenge is one of translation, of capturing in English the Romanian tongue, its tasting of Romanian soil and sensibility — even when the focus is on “the Communist dictatorship, the repression,/ the failed revolution.”
These images Mirela culls from the landscape of our senses, whether urban or rural, skip across the periphery of attention, quietly moving to the center of our emotional lives. She is a craftsman par excellence. But more than that, she makes us feel. In an age of digital impulses, that, my friends, is a very rare pleasure.
Within the tradition of polished verse, Mirela Roznoveanu has accomplished an astonishing marriage of Romantic elements. The elegance of Brecht and Rilke converses with the occasional surrealism of Rimbaud, flavored by a Baudelairian melancholy which moves the reader between the streets of New York City and ancient landscapes both historical and mythological. A good portion of the text is translated from the Romanian [versions by Heathrow O’Hare], and these especially seem masterfully rendered. At a time when formalist experimentation dominates much of the poetic scene, it is wonderful to have a collection that reaffirms the beauty and craft of the image within the geography of self discovery.” William James Austin
“…În tradiţia versului măiestru alcatuit, elegant şi rafinat, Mirela Roznoveanu a realizat o sinteză extraordinară a elementelor romantice. Eleganţa lui Brecht şi Rilke comunică adeseori cu suprarealismul de tip Rimbaud, totul avînd savorile melancoliei baudelairiene care îl transportă pe cititor fie pe străzile oraşului New York fie in privelişti antice, ambele atît istorice cît şi mitologice… Într-un timp în care experimentele formaliste domină o bună parte din lumea poeziei, este un adevărat privilegiu să ai în faţă o culegere de poeme care reafirmă frumuseţea versului şi meşteşugului imaginii ca fiind esenţiale în geografia lirică a descoperirii de sine.“ William James Austin
William James Austin lives in New York City. He is a poet and essayist. To date he has published four collections of poetry and theoretical essays: 1 UNDERWORLD 2 and 3 UNDERWORLD 4 (S Press, now distributed by Koja Press); 5 UNDERWORLD 6 and 7 UNDERWOR(L)D 8 (Koja Press); plus the monograph, A DECONSTRUCTION OF T. S. ELIOT: THE FIRE AND THE ROSE (Salzburg University Studies). He is currently Associate Professor of English and Philosophy and the Artistic Director of the Visiting Writers Program at the State University of New York, Farmingdale.
Interview Mariana Sipos with Mirela Roznoveanu, Bucharest 1999.
Honored Listee of Who’s Who 125 Anniversary issue. 
