About the Author

Elena Stefoi is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Starting Line (1996), from which the poems are taken. She has been an editor of the important political-cultural journal Dilema and a correspondent for Radio France (with daily reports from Bucharest) and the French-language L'Invitation in Bucharest. Currently she is General Consul at the Romanian Consulate in Montréal, Québec. Liana Vrajitoru is a graduate student in English at the State University of New York in Binghamton. Her translations have appeared in Poetry New York, Eclectic, Faultline, and the anthologies Day After Night: Twenty Romanian Poets for the Twenty-First Century (Norcross, GA: Criterion Publishing, 1999) and City of Dreams and Whispers: An Anthology of Contemporary Poets of Iasi (Iasi: The Center for Romanian Studies, 1998). Adam J. Sorkin has published 13 books of translation and numerous poets and poems in literary journals. Among the most recent books are, from BOA Editions, Sea-Level Zero, poems by Daniela Crasnaru (1999); from Bloodaxe, The Triumph of the Water Witch, prose poems by Ioana Ieronim (2000); and in the Poetry New York pamphlet series, Bebop Baby, by Mircea Cartarescu (1999). My collaborative translation with Christina Illias-Zarifopol of poems by Marta Petreu won the first Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize in 1999, and Liliana Ursu's The Sky Behind the Forest (Bloodaxe, 1997, with the poet and Tess Gallagher) was short-listed for the Weidenfeld Prize.