Contemporary Surrealism

“Have dada at heart. We’re all getting tired without dada at heart.” Tristan Tzara, 1923

Russian-born and Romanian-educated Valery Oisteanu’s 1970 literary debut in Bucharest was labeled “surrealistic” and blacklisted by the Communist regime. Long an important breeding ground for international Dada/Surrealistic activity, Romania was home to pioneering artists, sculptor Constantin Brancusi, playwright Eugene Ionesco, and numerous poets who emigrated to Zurich, Paris, and America. Like his predecessor, Tristan Tzara (whose pseudonym translates to “sad in the country”), Oisteanu, as a Jew, was doubly persecuted for his heritage and creative activities. Soon after his debut poetry collection, Prosthesis (1970), was published in Bucharest, Oisteanu came to New York City and began a lifetime of travel. For the past forty-three years, he has written in English.

This cultural cross-pollination is richly evident throughout Anarchy for a Rainy Day, a collection of poetry and collage that transports the reader to Europe, India, Bali, South America, and urban American streets. A longtime Dada proponent, Oisteanu’s work as an art critic echoes in his inspirations. Characters as diverse as Jackson Pollack, Taylor Meade, Sari Dienes, and Louise Bourgeois populate these pages, as well as an abiding Surrealistic sensibility that is filtered through contemporary aesthetics. Small moments collide into endless possibilities, whether the poet is riffing on city life or checking out museums or galleries. “Dancing With Nudes,” dedicated to Belgian Surrealistic painter Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), puts a simultaneous spin to Dada, resounding in the lines:

A lonely skeleton strolls into rooms of seductionStripped of his coat, skin and fleshSteps up to an old fashioned dance hallWhere naked Nymphs caress each otherLost among the ruins of Pompeii in Belgium

Oisteanu’s singular voice echoes artistic inspiration, far-flung adventures and personal history. Emotion punctuates nature in keenly unexpected observations.

The oleanders bobbing arrivederciThe cactus dropping their prickly fruitsHide your scars under the crowsGoodbye sunshine drying my socks

(from “Blue Moon in Punta Mare”)

This is poetry of the artistic avant garde, skipping from America to foreign shores, while lyrically celebrating a Bohemian freedom that may be quickly vanishing.

In New York, Oisteanu worked closely with an older generation of surrealists, like Charles Henri Ford and Lil Picard, and participated in Surrealist symposiums and publications. His long marriage to artist Ruth Oisteanu inspires some of the finest work in the book. A self-proclaimed hedonist, the writer explores sexuality with candor, wit, and compassion, never more so in the poems dedicated to his spouse and muse.

From “The Wilderness of Her Lips” that begins with an erotogenic declaration: “I have shamelessly robbed the Garden of Eden” and continues with lubricious details:

The astral goddess does her nightly danceReviving vanquished fires that burned beforeEcstasy of red nipples, beauty of round buttocksA bloody laughter, a pulsation of lips

Sensuality embroiders the writers world:

But in my forest there are no trees that will hide my appetiteThere is no room that cannot be a bordelloThere is no bed unpierced by the sword of Kali”

(from “Katmandu Prostitute”)

And humor crops up unexpectedly, as in:

Suddenly you are a Greek statuetteA muse maybe a nude Minueta friendly SexhibtionistaVoyeurisms with a seduction twistPlease put my on your party list

(from “Strip Poetry Without Banjos”)

Reading poetry that explores eroticism is fun and reminds us that the long gone (and more innocent) 1960s and 1970s Sexual Revolution was also a visionary and courageous movement.

I tiptoe to your heart shaped derriereI lean my ear to your curvaceous cheeksTo listen to the music of your sexual swingPunctuated by the panic of a restricted rectumThese obstacles that excite me even more

(from “The Jazz of Sex in Flight”)

With more than fifteen poems dedicated to deceased countercultural icons, Oisteanu’s observation, “That Immortality Road is littered with dead poets,” perhaps could have been presented as a separate chapbook. Harold Norse, Barney Rossett, Peter Orlovsky, Judith Malina, Ted Joans, Janine Pommy...