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Crossing the Carpathians

Carmen Bugan

Cover Picture of Crossing the Carpathians
10% off
Imprint: OxfordPoets
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (64 pages)
(Pub. Oct 2004)
9781903039687
£8.95 £8.05
  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Contents
  • When you knew that I was leaving
    You bought me a pair of red shoes;
    I left them in Florence with the memory of your hands.
    You were unsure when you said 'So you'll dance and forget'...

    from 'I drink with you'
    Crossing the Carpathians is a collection of poems about exile, family, and the survival of love. Carmen Bugan was born in Romania, and her book has its origins in her experiences during the 1980s, as a child of political dissidents and as an exile from her country. Written in America, Ireland, and England, her poems are about crossing countries and languages, recording loss and celebration, reconciling memories with dreams.
    Table of Contents

    On the side of forgetting

    In the silent country

    Portrait of a family

    The demonstration

    Fertile ground

    The first visit

    The divorce

    Exorcism

    Stories for the night

    Confession to my son

    Taking leave

    The train station at the border

    Grand Rapids, Michigan

    In exile

    Home

    For Sorin

    Ann Arbor

    For you

    Return to sound

    Sitting with a hurricane lamp in America

    At her funeral

    Doorways

    Leac na cumhaidg

    I drink with you

    Emilia

    Walking by the Atlantic at low tide

    Crossing the Carpathians with you

    Sleeping apple

    The day we decided we would lie

    By the lamp, burning

    Cursing the tongue

    Lullaby

    Memories

    In the middle of eternity

    This spring

    For my father

    Flight dream

    Handfast Point

    Black Head Ledges

    The second spring

    Windspit

    Moorings

    Poem without a name

    At the window

    Past solitude

    Lyme Regis

    Abbotsbury

    A house of stone

    Blindness, beside another war

    Under Magdalen Tower, with you

    The space into

    After seven years, for the unearthing of your body

    Evening

    January, Holywell Cemetery

    Oh, yes

    For my mother and sister

    Dr. Carmen Bugan is the author of three poetry collections Releasing the Porcelain Birds (Shearsman, 2016), The House of Straw (Shearsman, 2014), Crossing the Carpathians (Oxford Poets/Carcanet, 2004), and On the Side of Forgetting/Sulla Soglia della Dimenticanza (Edizione Kolibris, 2015). She has also written the memoir Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under ... read more
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