Mihai Brinas’ Invitation to Poetry is an invitation to love, music, longing, hope, nature, magic and so much more. Brinas has a rare gift for adding a touch of the mystical to the ordinary, and this gift extends to his general world view, with delightfully infectious effects on the reader. In “flight with no limits,” Brinas writes: “now/i do not ride the motorbike/unless/i put under its saddle/a feather/so that/i can ride the gryphon/that i used to see in my childhood dreams.” It is a timely reminder that magic is all around us if we only look and grant ourselves permission to retain a sense of wonder as we journey through life.
That journey, however, is not without risk and not without heartache, as Brinas reminds us in “the road”: “after me unknown faces remain/and in front of me shadows and doubts/disoriented i understand/that the road/has chosen me.” Mihai Brinas has both a rare appetite for life and a poet’s eye and ear for recording its mysteries and miracles. An Invitation to Poetry is an invitation that every reader should eagerly accept.
