back to verse, the blow to her communist beliefs (compounded by the USSR's repression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution) was fatal. In 1985 she accepted a visiting professorship at New York University; while she was there, a friend and fellow-poet, Gheorghe Ursu, was arrested by the Securitate for keeping a diary which happened to contain a handful of Cassian's poems lampooning the Ceausescu regime. Ursu was tortured and killed; fearing for her own safety, Cassian reluctantly applied for asylum in the US. At the age of 60 she found herself stranded abroad, ruthlessly scrubbed from her own country's literary annals and forced to fit her thoughts to a foreign language. Continuity was a luxury she had to do without.from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Where blue dolphins roam
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