Lucia Cherciu's
Immigrant Prodigal Daughter
knows how to "grapple / with the gravity of grammar," weaving together the author's roots in Romania and her life in New York. It is not easy work, yet there's abundance here, too-from the orchards where a grandfather grafted three types of apple on a single trunk, to the fruit trees the poet later plants during lockdown. The gifts of these poems aren't flashy but bone-deep, like the pillow from a grandmother's wake. We're reminded that home is both ache and welcome, distance and forgiveness. What a gift, then, to arrive at the table of these poems, rich with "wedding soups, roasted roosters, cherry preserves, // juices and sauces that splatter an arduous cook's kitchen."
-Laura Donnelly, author of
Midwest Gothic
vividly conjures
her Romanian past. Her poems explore homesickness and loss, exemplified by the Romanian custom of giving away a dead one's belongings. Giving becomes the mirror-image of loss ("We Only Get to Keep What We Give Away"), and language becomes the mirror in which the beloved past can still be seen. The "longing for home,
dorul
"
is counterbalanced and finally outweighed by the speaker's redemptive generosity. Her joy in giving, tending her garden, writing these poems, heals the rift between worlds: "If my grandmothers can see me / they recognize the flowers of their youth" ("The Privilege of Water").
-Barbara Ungar, author of
Save Our Ship
is a tender lament for a country left behind, but what is a country? It is dirges sung, apricots, and lavender. It is
capoate,
the black housedresses worn by old Romanian women. Amid the rich sensuality of memory, the poet takes herself to task. Has she praised enough? Done too much? Not enough? "I have taken my child / away from my mother" writes Cherciu, and yet what the reader overwhelmingly feels beside the vulnerable self-questioning is a love song to family and an ode to ancestry.
-Jessica Cuello, author of
Liar