Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter. Ursu's book focuses on a place that is at once a literary crossroads and at the same time isolated in the Carpathian mountains. The eighty poems that make up the three sections of Goldsmith Market are all marked with the longing for travel. The first section, unnamed, presents a series of portraits and scenes, from Nobel Prize winners to busboys, all uneasy in their present place. "False Landscapes," the second section, explores the images of the Mediterranean we receive through writers such as Sappho and Cavafy, and shows us how isolated we are from the actual places by the mythology surrounding Carthage, Lesbos, and Alexandria. In the third section, "Goldsmith Market," Ursu follows the connections between Sibiu's history as a meeting place for poets and its contemporary location, with the same attention to distance and longing. The three sections are united by Ursu's interest in precise, provocative portraiture.

"These poems are luminous, numinous, they have the power to change The Black Sea with a splash of a palm into a spring. Liliana Ursu is a dancer, an archeologist of light. How she makes The Black Sea again, how she expands the places of myth is beyond grasping: your skin, your mind, your heart rejoice. Gracious, hard-edged, generous and moving."—Tomaž Šalamun

Author City: Bucharest ROM

Liliana Ursu is a poet, prose writer, and translator, with eighteen books published in Romania. She has been translated into many languages, including three previous books in English. She lives in Bucharest, teaching courses in poetry and creative writing, producing occasional radio programs for Romania cultural, and writing. She has received two Fulbright grants and taught creative writing at the University of Louisville and at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Her books in English include A PATH TO THE SEA (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2011), LIGHTWALL (Zephyr Press, 2009), and GOLDSMITH MARKET (Zephyr Press, 2003).