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Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania and lived there until 1984, when his family immigrated to the United States. Since then, he has lived in DeKalb, Iowa City, New York, Oaxaca City, Iasi, Milwaukee, and Chicago. He is a poet, visual artist, and translator of contemporary Romanian poetry. His first poetry book is called Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX, 2010). His second poetry book is called Pastoral Emergency and it is in search of a brave publisher who isn’t afraid of a little content to go with formal experiment. Sample.
Tanta earned his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop in 2000 and his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2009 with literary specialization in twentieth-century American poetry and the European avant-garde. His poems, translations, and artwork work may be found in journals such as: EPOCH, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Cream City Review, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, and Drunken Boat. Tanta has had two collaborative poems with Reginald Shepherd anthologized in Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry. Most recently, he has chaired a panel at the 2010 AWP titled, Immigrant Poetry: Aesthetics of Displacement. Currently, he is teaching creative writing while working on a collection of short prose.
A prose poem from Gene’s latest book called What is to Be Said.The Gorilla in the Room

Shush! You must not speak of the animal. Its shadow haunts the ground before you even step on the ground. As you step on it, a gentle rake flips stars upon your forehead. You hold your crooked forehead between your crooked palms and shoo. You look up and worry the skies will fall before you even make your point. Something troubles the hens. The silent behemoth continues to slurp the air. Turquoise continues to fall on your oar blades. Never mind about the oar blades, I want that ground-dwelling ape out of this room by suppertime. We all draw our various breaths. Until now, the nameless primate had not moved. It had, in fact, not even twitched a whisker in the mizzle. Deep down in the well of myself, I began to harbor morbid thoughts of side dishes. Maybe the unsaid beast passed away and wafted up into the architecture. How would father and I carve up all that beauty?