empower

Interview about “Love poems” and writing- for Long Beach City College, California

/ Andrada Costoiu / 13 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Yesterday I had the pleasure to talk about the process of writing and about my new poetry book with Dr. Meena Singhal from Long Beach City College California. Below I am sharing with you the interview, which was very fun and a good opportunity to share with the audience my interest and love for literature.

If you are an educator (or someone that has discussion groups about literature and writing) , and would like to invite me to speak in your class, I would be happy to do so, if my time allows. I do not charge anything for it, I’m doing it out of my love for teaching and learning, for the young generations but also for people from all walks of life.

Please click here to access the interview.

Please click here to access the interview

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.

Where hope is made

/ Andrada Costoiu / 3 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Image by John Samuel, Library of Congress  (Source: JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post)

Shadows of souls carried by wings
Embarked to paint visions of stories told and untold.
A dozen missions have now been declared,
In a quest to make the world safe.

A Bird’s eye view flight
Carries the souls who take notes on symbolistic frontiers.
They tap in sights from above
Unsure yet hopeful
That the “differences” they weave intense on their maps
Will debunk old narratives and bring restauration of unity to the people.

A water wagon
Carries the ones who feel the mist in their hearts.
Between the ground down below
And the clouds that swell, 
They’re on a quest to fertilize the seeds of existence.
They tend to the youthfulness of flowers and to all other species,
And in in synchronous voice, they glorify nature.

Some are in a quest to build a world without taxes,
Because not everything is for sale.
They fly to declare independence
From all agencies that monetize the souls of human beings.

Two lovers and few others,
Carry with them the rebirth of wonder.
Their spirts, filled with light,
Are a proof that the love in our hearts can never be muted.

Some souls are still stuck in the Age of Anxiety
They’ve tried take flight,
But they drop, pulled down by the weight of their fears.
They too will be safe,
As the others will not hit the ground,
Until their stories are heard, 
Until the hope in a better, safer world is restored.  

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.

I would like to continue

/ Andrada Costoiu / 1 Comment

by Andrada Costoiu

Photo: NASA, free photos

I  would like to continue, until it ends,
Everything ends, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t…..
Some physicist says that there is no such thing as the past and future,
And that the order of time is not a one-way street.
 
I try to believe him, but I cannot devoid myself of the trace of temporality,
And strangely enough, it doesn’t bother me.
My silent thoughts summon and acknowledge past memories,
And piece by piece, each memory is filled with love, fear, desire or passion.
 
From my smallness I see the footprints of our humanity,
It’s not silent and aimless,
It makes me smile watching how we are all striving and longing to get what we desperately want,
And I can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
 
We don’t suffer from a tragic misconception of time,
We take what we understand and we strive to understand more.
We have time. Everything that doesn’t work will work one day,
And I would like to continue. 

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.

My poem “An intimate accordance with life” published in Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art and Words

/ Andrada Costoiu / 8 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Image by Jemima Muir, for Visual Verse

Visual Verse is an anthology of art, poetry, short fiction and non-fiction. You can find more information about it here Visual Verse : An Anthology of Art and Words . Each month authors are asked to write something, within an hour, inspired by an image. The image for this month was the one above. Below is the poem I wrote, which you can find on page 13 of this month’s anthology.

In accordance with life

by Andrada Costoiu

He shed the stiff, dead skins
That he once rightfully wore,
And let the universe move through him, 
Turning the pulses of energy
Into life.

Perhaps suffering,
For this takes courage,
He became a tumult of ideas and emotions 
Both sincere and worthy, 
To be watered and nourished.

If you’ll come close to his face,
You’ll blink twice and then realize 
That he is struggling, 
As the waves swell and recede within his body,
Receptive to the ebbs and flows of life.

He is embracing, cherishing, protecting creation,
Knowing that when the time will come,
Death will not take him entirely,
And he will continue to exist,
As the universe will turn him
Into pulses of energy that will create life.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.

Whatever we call beauty

/ Andrada Costoiu / 11 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Mirrors that slim down,
That show no wrinkles,
Expensive clothes, 
The perfect bodies,
The perfect abs,
The perfect color of your skin…..

“The perfect” floats everywhere
And is a salient feature of our social story.

Since the earliest days,
Scores of media pundits 
Have created illusions
And broke our minds into thinking 
That their illusions are true.

We all clap together,
At whatever they call beauty,
Across time and space….
Meanwhile, liters of hot tears,
Fall from the eyes of those who do not fit.

Whatever we call beauty?

Have we forgotten 
To shine the magic lanterns into who we really are?
Have we forgotten,
To think in hearts and not in images?

 ****

The bogyman is difference,
Sustaining that sinister, yet profound insight 
Into the cleavages of our societies.
Not everyone can feel everyone’s pain,
But has numbness been accepted and embraced?

Whatever we call beauty?

Have we forgotten pain?
Have we forgoten
Our very first heartbreaks,
And how that made our world feel cold and frightening?

Whatever we call beauty?
Whatever you call beauty?

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.

“I still ask for two glasses” , on Free Verse Revolution

/ Andrada Costoiu / 5 Comments

I started the journey of seriously writing not so long ago, but I know I had it in me for a long time. In middle school I had literature professor that I will never forget. He never gave high marks and he will always get upset when we made grammatical mistakes. I was his favorite student. Back then, I did not understand why. I was so young and just a rebellious kid, in a communist country that did not encourage creativity and free thinking. At times, I got punished for voicing my mind. One a teacher put me in front of the blackboard and asked me to fill it with a communist slogan. I took the chalk and I wrote what he asked me. I had to write that slogan 53 times, while the whole class was watching. I was in 8th grade. But the literature teacher rewarded me with high marks, because he appreciated my writing, not infested with communist thinking and such.

This is just a parenthesis, to introduce a blog that was so gracious to feature one of my poems, a poem that you have seen here before and that is also part of my new poetry book. The reason I brought this story up is because the theme for this month for Free Verse Revolution is “After Life”. The first thing that comes in mind when we think about After Life is…..what happens after we die. But, there are so many different After Lives, aren’t they? One is the example above: my life after escaping communism. I have a novel coming up, it is written but I am knocking on agents and publishing houses’ doors. Another kind of After Life is you, me, us, after a significant relationship has ended. My poem is about that.

You can read it at Free Verse Revolution if you click here. If you are a poet, I encourage you to submit some of your poetry to this blog, as I think it is a wonderful way of sharing our work.

I still ask for two glasses

by Andrada Costoiu

Photo: Jean Beaufort, “Refreshing Glasses Of Red Wine”, Public Domain.

I planned to forget, 
But when you truly love someone,
It never leaves you.

I hoped that the rains would wash me into a river,
So I will learn to flow like water,
Shapeless, formless,
Until I’ll reach a shore
Where memories cannot travel.

It has been months since it happened,
We fought for our hearts,
But the distance swallowed us whole,
And spit us out onto different paths.

And so here I sit,
near the piano,
still asking for two glasses
For the ghosts of you and I.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.

“Hear your soul” published in the Literary Yard

/ Andrada Costoiu / 4 Comments

Here is another poem, a bit heavier than the other I posted the other day, than has also been published in the Literary Yard. I hope you will enjoy it. You can read it in the Literary Yard here.

Photo : “Believe By Force”, by Kai Stachowiak

Hear your soul
by Andrada Costoiu

Bemused from the perusal,
Of walks through the world’s faiths,
You’re seating at the table of your life,
With present and the future you,
Still searching for enlightenment,
Still wishing that it is much more you knew.

Define the undefined, and feel it!
Your animated consciousness does that everyday,
Then why to find the answer,
To soul and its existence,
Is still uncharted way?

Behold the contradiction, the chatter of two sides,
As far apart as ever, both struggle to be guides.
One says that it’s your body the vessel for your soul,
The other that these two are indivisible and whole.

The inner music of your thoughts secretly shouts: ”I am immortal”!
Convincing, but certainly revised by your sense of the natural world.

Your heart pulsing beneath your chest breathes life,
You think, maybe your story didn’t last long enough to know the answer.
But then you lock eyes with yourself in the mirror,
You see,
Your soul, the silent actor,
Sealed tightly with the corks of your unfettered nature,
Assimilating, crystallizing, metabolizing,
The pain and the pleasure,
The gain and the loss,
The hideous and the lovely,
The demonic and the divine!
You feel yourself emerging countless times,
With purpose and determination,
Shoving away in scorn,
A vast blind history of explanations,
Of our origins and of the destiny of being born!

The chatter quiets and you listen,
The waters of your mind are clear and quiet,
And in their depths you see the wisdom of the untold aeons of time,
The energy and love,
Unquestioning, complete,
Beautiful and hopeful,
Becoming you.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

Life study

/ Andrada Costoiu / 18 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Photo: “Path In The Woods”, by George Hodan

My steps leave marks on the dirt I walk upon,
Next to so many others,
Big and small marks,
I wonder whose stories were or are these….

Drums’ cadence, silent and loud,
Dictate the rhythm of the live orchestra.
Planning, grinding, gripping,
Life in an orderly fashion,
As the clock keeps ticking: time for this, time for that.

I dared to let myself stumble,
That’s when I’ve fallen  “out of step” and crashed into the arms of unfelt emotions.

I feared that without the cadence of drums I had no idea of who I am,
But I couldn’t let their sound pierce my soul anymore,
And dance me into the oblivion. 
It became a question if I would stay fearful or not.
Tear after tear, I cried my way out to freedom.


Unraveled, I threw myself into the sea of unplanned knowledge,
I might be arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic,
Or I might be sailing on a little ship under a beautiful blue sky.

Everyday I walk my own path…..
My steps leave marks next to others,
Big and small,
I smile and wonder whose stories were or are these….

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

Wishing On Dandelions

/ Andrada Costoiu / 22 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Photo: Martin Birkin, “Dandelion 1″

Dark! Dark!
Do you feel that?
It’s my hand pulling you forward,
Through the dark tunnel of a lost cause,
Where time of your life was already spent.
“Come on! You can do it!”
Do you hear that?
It’s the voice of faith,
Your voice that merges with others,
Me, you, walking the tunnel.
You’re dragging your feet…..
Does it ever end?

Tough! Isn’t it?
Life is tough.
You feel in the holes, you jumped into some,
You crawled through mud chasing your dreams.

Are you tired?
Has your mind and body gave in,
In your organized preparation,
To become who you really want to be?

“Where are we going?” you ask the others,
Walking, crawling through the tunnel,
Next to you.
“We are walking out, keep going!”


And one by one, people come out,
Returning to sunshine and a sky with no clouds,
Returning to the innocence of roaming through the fields, 
To the dandelions,
Waiting to make all dreams and desires come true.
And so they pick another dandelion, 
Wishing in their hearts, and believing that their wish will come true.

Note: Life is a journey, and there are many dark tunnels. It is tough, but I believe that the beauty of the human spirit lies in our hopes and dreams. Keep listening to the whispers of your hopes, keep chasing your dreams, no darkness lasts forever. 

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

Good for you

/ Andrada Costoiu / 10 Comments

by Andrada Costoiu

Photo:Mohamed Mahmoud Hassan, “Mentor,help, Climbing, Hand” 

Good for you,
All of you that have lived beautiful love stories,
Have broken your heart and then got up,
Wiped your tears and carried on, 
Towards another day, and another story.

Good for you,
All that face sickness,
As we all think that disease is never part of us,
Until it is,
Good for you for conquering the fears that are whirling in your head,
Good for you for choosing and fighting to be a survivor,
You are our teachers,
Because you have an extraordinary capacity to rebound and survive,
And you can show us how to stand up when life puts us down.

Good for you,
All of you that have dreams, and have broken your wings chasing them,
Only to get up,
And fly higher than before.

Good for you,
All of you that have lost yourselves, 
Had fallen, cried, and then got up,
And walked with your head up high, not hiding your permanent scars.
None of us has an innate toughness, but you have built your own,
Re-framed your life after a deep upset, 
And now you teach us resilience and strength. 

Good for you, all young and old,
Damaged and hopeful,
That have been through the hoops of life.

There is no grand script for life,
And each has his own,
We are all worthy and free,
To spin our versions of our stories.

Good for us,
Humanity has lasting worth and meaning,
Make your story count,
And don’t forget that after a tear, and a hurt,
You will always be stronger.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2019 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content