Biography
Oişteanu was born in Karaganda, Kazakh SSR, raised and educated in Romania. He graduated from the Department of Chemical Industry of the Politechnical Institute in Bucharest.
In 1970, Oişteanu made his literary debut in Romania with a collection of poems called Proteze. Due to his Jewish ancestry, the communist regime allowed him to emigrate to New York City in 1972 or 1973, and he has been writing in English ever since.
Oişteanu adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life. He appears regularly at poetry readings in various New York venues, where he presents original performances of Zen and Dada-inspired "jazzoetry". He is a freelance art critic and on the permanent staff of several arts magazines, including The Brooklyn Rail, NYArts, Rain Taxi, the Spanish publication art.es, and the Canadian magazine D'Art International. Oişteanu is a member of Poets and Writers Inc. in New York and the founder and president of PASS: Poets and Artists Surrealist Society.
Read more about this topic: Valery Oisteanu
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