Winner of the Herder Prize, Nichita Stanescu was one of Romania's most celebrated contemporary poets. This dazzling collection of poems - the most extensive collection of his work to date - reveals a world in which heavenly and mysterious forces converse with the everyday and earthbound, where love and a quest for truth are central, and urgent questions flow. His startling images stretch the boundaries of thought. His poems, at once surreal and corporeal, lead us into new metaphysical and linguistic terrain.

Nichita Stanescu (1933–1983) was the most beloved and groundbreaking Romanian poet of the twentieth century. Stanescu transformed Soviet-style aesthetics from within, infusing the tangible world with a metaphysical vocabulary all his own. Stanescu received the Herder Prize in 1975 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1979.
Sean Cotter’s translations from the Romanian include Liliana Ursu’s Lightwall and Nichita Danilov’s Second-hand Souls. His essays, articles, and translations have appeared in Conjunctions, Two Lines, and Translation Review. He is Associate Professor of Literature and Literary Translation at the University of Texas at Dallas, Center for Translation Studies. Cotter’s translation of Mircea Cartarescu’s Blinding is also available from Archipelago.