SOURCE: A review of Cheerleader for a Funeral, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 4, Winter, 1994, p. 110.

In this review, Dorian praises the seductive variety of Cheerleader for a Funeral, in which the author treats the themes of love, loss, and growing older both humorously and seriously.

Is there life after death-and poetry writing after emigration? With her fourth collection of poems in English translation—following Lady of Miracles (1985), Call Yourself Alive? (1988), and Life Sentence (1990)—Nina Cassian, the Romanian poet and author of over fifty books of verse and prose who in 1985 asked for political asylum in this country, gives an affirmative answer as she consolidates her postemigration literary career. Cheerleader for the Funeral collects a number of Cassian's earlier poems (some, like "Dialectic" or "Dance," were written as early as 1963), together with a few recent pieces, among which three poems have been written directly in English, a triumph...