Andra Rotaru’s experimental collection, Tribar, from Saturnalia Books, reads much like being thrown into the deep of a body of water before having learned to swim. Somatic play, various layers of language, and a floating anxiety around personal memory, collective history, and trauma remind us “the ultimate animal reaction is sensation” (24). Anca Roncea’s heady translation from the Romanian positions readers in a compendium of geometric illusion, where we must constantly find connections between moments and ideas that seem to touch, but never do.
The concept of tribar is established in the first poem as “three right angles . . . joined together in an impossible way,” framing the connections readers must search for throughout the collection (3). The five sections of the book consistently work toward dislocation of the senses as a way to surprise through what’s near and constantly relocates us in the body. Rotaru uses the language and movement of music and dance to recenter the reader, working toward a reconsideration of the past from the future, reframing what’s learned along the way. This is perhaps most notable in the third section where famous Romanian composer George Enescu is introduced. Wind forces dance that is always one association away from violence.
“[K]inetic air” and the language of the amygdala charge the anxiety felt in many sections where borders are crossed, dead children play tricks and dogs bleed out, stirring mămăligă is a way to read time, while years-long fear over theft and break-ins demand further investigation. Readers are left to their own reckoning when faced with text in boxes, bold phrases, and underlined moments within the text. How else could we experience the anxieties of finding oneself in an ever-shifting historical and cultural landscape? The Romania of Rotaru’s childhood no longer exists the way it once did, except when viewed through the rearview:
joy in this abandoned country
through which memories pass. Where nothing
connects to something else, where there are no fingerprints left
I am
In the final moments of the collection, the threads readers have had to braid into meaning ring clear with the simple first-person conjugation, demanding a reread (64).
In the translator’s note, Roncea highlights the use of reflexive verbs and shortened pronouns in the source language. In Romanian, like many languages, verb tense and shortened pronouns lend a compactness to language that does not exactly carry over into English. Through syntax, Roncea brings a new level of delight to the text that balances imperative with layers of meaning. Furthermore, Rotaru quotes roughly twenty-six different authors throughout the text, continually recontextualizing her poetry. It is worth noting that the quotes in the original collection are in Romanian, French, and English. Roncea manages brief moments that maintain the initial structure of Rotaru’s trilingualism without sacrificing too much in the name of foreign readers. The balance and tact employed in the translation make it impossible not to develop immense awe for Roncea’s skill.
How do we reckon with an ever-increasing age of anxiety, when the horrors of the past echo into the uncertainty of the future? Andrea Rotaru’s Tribar offers a look at these themes considered through the body and what it means to re-experience history and trauma in a tribar we must make touch through interpretation. Dislocation creates a rich tapestry, which surprises upon each new read. Although we are thrown in headfirst, we emerge all the better for it. Tribar is an electric collection, placing Andrea Rotaru at the head of contemporary Romanian poetry, and Anca Roncea as a translator of immense promise to keep an eye on.
