As editor and publisher of Lightwood magazine, I’ve appreciated the poetry of Lucia Cherciu for a long time. Along with reading much of her work, I’ve heard her read live (and on Zoom) and have shared the mic with her on numerous occasions. I’ve always been taken with her work and how she can find a balance of the world view along with highly detailed imagery set regionally. Addressing both the universal and the familiar community, sometimes simultaneously is one of her gifts as a writer. This connection is prevalent in her captivating new book, Immigrant Prodigal Daughter (Kelsey Publishing, 2023). ///// The form and much of the content of this book is new to me and will be to readers of Ms. Checiu’s work. There are nearly eighty poems in this new volume, and all but five poems are in unrhymed couplets. The additional six poems are in longer stanzas, triplets, and longer lined verses, and one ghazal. The couplets work here as the major format; they add pace without the reader racing through the poems and also add specific, individual thoughts to each short stanza, which then add to the whole when we reach the end of the piece. Simply adding that breath of air, that bit of white space between the two-line stanzas, gives us a nanosecond to digest what we’ve just read and prepares us for the next thought. ///// The subject matter is diverse and plays with the political, the natural, and the poet’s familiar worlds. She also moves us from subject to subject, sometimes drawing us in as observer, and sometimes creating a more essay-type poem where the inner thoughts of the writer come to the forefront and are shared in a more intimate way with the reader. //// As a Romanian-born writer, Ms. Cherciu often reminisces about her early life, with images that interweave the foreign with the familiar. From “The Romanian Blouse” After all these years, I still don’t own an embroidered Romanian blouse. I have some ancient ones woven and sewn by my grandmothers or my mother, but I don’t wear any of the new ones, copies designed to look like the authentic ones. I guess I cannot walk around with a museum piece. //// Much of the work springs from the natural world with short, detailed studies that brings us into the poet’s own backyard or neighborhood walks. Ms Cherciu draws us in to each piece allowing the poet and reader to meet within the poem, always the mark of a fine writer. Poems from the writer’s memory bank are puzzle pieces which by the end of the book create a picture of the book’s title, Immigrant Prodigal Daughter. If we separate the words that make up the title, we find poems that address the life of the immigrant, the prodigal, and the daughter. These short bursts of remembered images of people, places and incidents, take on the form of reading a memoir, always unique and interwoven. From “This Summer I Cannot Travel Home” Kindness and apricots. The kindness of apricots. A window bench with pillows, books, and tapestries from home. I haven’t been to Romania in four years. And this summer again we’re not going home. Not going home is like not drinking coffee: I am half asleep, half dreaming, half lost. ///// Immigrant Prodigal Daughter is a poetry book that stimulates both the intellect and the emotions. The poet is self-assured and able to bring the reader a full range of subjects and ideas, never straying from the core theme that resonates in the title. You can read another poem of Lucia Cherciu’s: “Fighting the Urge to Clean” here in Lightwood by clicking the poet’s name on our Search Button. Another recent book, Train Ride to Bucharest is available online and from The Sheep Meadow Press (2017). ///// Lucia Cherciu is the author of six books of poetry, including Immigrant Prodigal Daughter (Kelsay Books, 2023), Train Ride to Bucharest (Sheep Meadow Press, 2017), which received the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, Edible Flowers (Main Street Rag, 2016), Lalele din Paradis / Tulips in Paradise (Editura Eikon, 2017), Altoiul Râsului / Grafted Laughter (Editura Brumar, 2010), and Lepădarea de Limbă / The Abandonment of Language (Editura Vinea, 2009). Her work was nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of the Net and has appeared in numerous publications. She received her Ph.D. in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with the dissertation titled “Luddicrous ‘Scribbling Women’: The Politics of Laughter and Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers.” Cherciu is a Professor of English at SUNY / Dutchess Community College and served as the 2021-2022 Dutchess County, New York poet laureate. Her web page is http://luciacherciu.webs.com.
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