Valery Oisteanu


Serenade for Sarane Alexandrian

Morning has died at the Library of the Alchemists
Collector of automatic ghosts of friends, asleep
Poet and his eyeglasses of apocalyptic catastrophes
Historian’s hand next to drawings by Victor Brauner
Next to Gherasim Luca’s writing pens and recordings
Unperturbed by asteroids landing in front of him
Cooled by the written breath of your poems
Last surr-gonaut in the boat across river Styx
Temporary presence: "Supérieur Inconnu",
Exasperation of translation: it means
Unknown Superior, the surreal explorer
Sarane extreme, Sarane supreme
Brain for Andre Breton’s–fame
Expelled for Victor Brauner in '48
Pain from Bellmer’s tortured dolls
Rain for Ernst forest, got drunk on rain
Herold’s "mistreatment of art" as muse
Sarane Alexandrian, never forgotten
Forever remembered, even in total silence.



Gallery Zero in Amsterdam

Hunk Spitteller is dead and soon will be his gallery
The owner sleeps below his "frei-room"
Room free of rules, for free thinkers
Tower of Babel grows to the sky, six stories high
The builders are all disciples of Hollanditis
The virus of freedom
Ground zero for squatters of Ruitgoord
The front line of the balloon festival
The corporate pirates flood the land
Creating Africa Harbor
Pushing poets out, pushing orchids out, pushing artists out
Crates of wood, crates of books
Building blocks of the Tower of Babel
Crates of wood inhabited by rebellious psychedelians
Green mustache, grasshoppers in the lapel
Ali-da-da has Indian looking tails
Sarah Jacob an artist lives in Victor Hugo's house (in France)
She found a gun and love letters that belonged to the writer
Up the ramp a house for punky poets with yellow suits
Punjabi writers, space cake makers
And the ghost of Kurt Schwitters
All fighting for the village, fighting for the future
"Fortune favors fools"
Engraved at the entrance of St. Geertruida church
A post-apocalyptic oasis of the Amsterdam Balloon Company.



Valery Oisteanu was born in Russia (1943), educated in Romania, & adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life. He moved to New York City in 1972, & has been writing in English for the past 38 years.

He is the author of 11 books of poetry, a book of short fiction and a book of essays: The AVANT-GODS. A new collection of poetry with collage illustrations entitled Perks in Purgatory was published by the Fly by Night Press in 2009.

For the past 10 years he has been a columnist at New York Arts Magazine and art critic for Brooklyn Rail and www.artnet.com. He is also a contributing writer for French, Spanish & Romanian art and literary magazines (La Page Blanche, Art.es, Viata Romaneasca, Observatorul Cultural, Contemporanul, Romania Literara etc.)

As an artist he exhibits collages and assemblages on a regular basis at galleries in New York and also creates collages as covers and illustrations for books and magazines.

 
 
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