ANGEL RIDING A BEAST
By
The poet Weigl assisted the Romanian Ursu--who has spent much time in the States--with this translation of her work, which first began appearing in Bucharest in 1977. Erotic and meditative, Ursu's poems also record her stay in the US as a Fulbright Fellow at Penn State (where Weigl teaches), and the ""sad aura"" of Eastern Europe shadows her poems lamenting, predictably, American consumerism and na•vetƒ. Her best ones pay tribute to Ovid and Ezra Pound, whose fractured lyricism she often echoes in poems about her native land, upon which her reputation will develop.