Like fine wine, I am reading your poems in Anarchy for a Rainy day slowly. I am traveling the globe with you, walking streets, dancing with dead poets, surviving fires. thank you for what you do…I will write back when I have read them all. for now, I will see in my dreams,Lenin writing at a window, Allen dropping poems on corners, and you wandering the world searching for poems that can move humanity…much love and respect.
—MIKE PLATSKY
From Interview with Paul McRandle, Rain Taxi Magazine
A Surrealist and a Dadaist in the Romanian vein, extending back to Urmuz by way of Tristan Tzara and Gellu Naum, Valery Oisteanu is a poet who performs his work with absolute commitment to the moment. Since leaving Bucharest in 1972, he has lived in New York’s East Village for over four decades, dedicating himself to his poetry and collage works. Over the years, he has published twelve books of poems, a collection of short stories, and an essay collection, along with his ongoing art criticism. I spoke with him recently about his latest collection, Anarchy for a Rainy Day (Spuyten Duyvil, $15.00).
—Paul McRandle, rain taXI
Reviews
Sensitive Skin Magazine
In all these poems, Oisteanu braids together the strands of documentary observation with Surrealist ebullience, making Surrealist verse more quotidian…Anarchy for a Rainy Day shows that, while literature does not progress, in the sense of each generation producing better writing, it is moved forward by those who, while remaining in one literary current, can dialectically redirect the stream so that it no longer carries all the old silt.
—Jim Feast
To read the complete review, see Sensitive Skin Magazine.