“Legend of the Walled-up Wife” featured in The Antioch Review

The spring 2013 issue of The Antioch Review takes a thoughtful look at our recent volume, Legend of the Walled-up Wife, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s translations of Ileana Mălăncioiu’s poetry. Written under the Ceaușescu regime, the book has dark, chilling imagery throughout and critic Benjamin S. Grossberg writes: “Mălăncioiu often blurs the line between life and death, creating the sense of haunted dislocation one finds in Dickinson.” He adds that Ní Chuilleanáin’s translation, despite its colloquial tone, “gives the poems a shapeliness, a formality that complements their understated horror.” Mălăncioiu’s work is described as “a reminder of just how viscerally … art can speak, even through a censor.”

© Cover Art by David Battle