There is, in the being of Nichita Stănescu, a strange mixture of an almost religious respect for poetry and an almost cynical surrender to reality ... Nichita Stănescu demonstrates a characteristic mode of being a poet in our world.

The novelty of Nichita Stănescu's poetry was clear from his first book, even if only in superficial ways. His manner of speaking about himself and the world were, more than anything, shocking. What could resemble the lyrical anatomies of the poet innocently aware of his own body? Knees blossomed, arms sprayed like snakes, panthers and lions emerged from shoulders, dreams stuck in the temples, light in the skeleton, hands moved sunrays, the ring-finger clanked against the middle. An imponderability of things: jumping, dancing, floating, flying? His poetry imagined a world without gravity, immaterial, diaphanous, in which objects slipped from one form into another, one shape to another like mysterious fluids; and at the same time one in which states of the soul are substances and dense, in which feelings touch, hit, and hurt each other.

Nichita Stănescu is the most important post-World War II poet of Romania. With him, through him, the logos of the Romanian language takes revenge on its poets.

The greatest contemporary Romanian poet.

Nichita Stănescu blasted open the prison-gates of Socialist realism in Romanian poetry, and all of us rushed out, reveling in the freedom he gave us. His poems display an astounding brilliance that time has not tarnished. These splendid translations by Sean Cotter will introduce English speakers to a universal genius.

For those – sadly most of us – unacquainted with this brilliant post-World War II Romanian poet’s prolific accomplishment, this selection should prove a revelation. During a historical period of all-too-familiar repression and enforced orthodoxy, his work surged off the page with that liberty only the most gifted and courageous artists possess, giving the lie to the lies around him, and the slant truths of poetry to his listeners.

Stănescu has a gift for creating active, startling images. . . In Wheel With a Single Spoke ... Stănescu is at his best; he examines the nature of time, space and geometry, and in the friction between science and lyric impulse, produces some of his most beautiful lines. We’re lucky that, nearly thirty years after his death, his voice still comes through, clearer than ever.

For a poet who is thought of as one of the defining Romanian voices of the mid-20th century, Stănescu is poorly represented in English … Archipelago’s fuller treatment is long overdue. Stănescu is one of the poets who broke through the socialist-realism sound barrier and propelled Romanian poetry into new spheres. He has been revered for decades in Romania as a great voice and it is our considerable good fortune that Cotter has helped us to see why.

Cotter’s versions [of Stănescu's poems] ... put back into circulation one of twentieth century Europe’s leading voices.

A good translation of Stănescu’s poems was long overdue, and Cotter’s mastery of Romanian subtleties is perfect, equal to the craftsman’s skill.

At the time I started writing, about thirty years ago, I was obsessed with Romanian poetry. Today, I still think that Stănescu is one of the most important poets of the 20th century.