Dear Popescu

—epistles to Cristian Popescu, 1959-1995

Among my current projects is an odd series of epistolary prose poems addressed to a poet whose work came onto my radar by way of a book chapter that suggested certain affinities between his work and my own. That chapter, “Subjectivity and the Dialogic Self: The Christian Orthodox Poetry of Scott Cairns and Cristian Popescu,” was authored by Romanian scholar Carmen Popescu and included in Literature as Dialogue. I was delighted by the discovery, and felt an immediate connection to the poet, realizing that from our respective (one might suppose discrete) corners, we had been wrestling with very similar matter. I was also saddened to learn that the poet had passed away some years prior to my coming upon his work. My response was to begin a correspondence with my lost brother. Here is the first of these:

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Dear Popescu

—epistles to my lost brother

Young brother! How delighted I was to come upon your stunning poems, and then how immediately saddened I became when I learned that you had fallen asleep, and that you had done so some twenty-six years prior to my having stumbled upon your words. I was sadder yet to learn that you were but thirty-six years old at the time, a time when I was but forty. I have ordered, just now, a small book holding several of your poems rendered into English—prose poems!—printed, I see, in the company of two other Romanian poets of whom I remain sorely ignorant.

I expect the book to arrive in a week or so, and when it arrives I will pore over your several constructions, surely grinning in delight, and surely wincing in sadness at my tardiness in welcoming both them and you into the discrete discursive circle I contain. Doamne, miluiește. Sadly, that is my only Romanian, learned in church during that part of the Orthros when we in our little Greek church often include Slavonic, Arabic, and Romanian in our serial, earnest petitions. Lord have mercy, indeed.

Here’s praying that you are this very moment enjoying what we suppose to be a place of brightness, a place of verdure, a place of repose, and a place where the radiance of the God’s Countenance rejoices all who rest with you thereabouts. Your sense of humor really sends me, as do your kindness and self-deprecation—saintly virtues in my opinion, and exceedingly rare, certainly rare among poets, now and ever. Rare, but a joy to behold.

I found several photos of you online, and I was immediately pleased by the slight resemblance you bear to my dear teacher and my friend Larry Levis, also fallen asleep, having followed you into the mystery just a year or so after you had parted those waters, that veil, whatever. His heart also failed to keep up with him. He also was a man of humor, kindness, and easy self-deprecation. I suppose that you would have liked him very much. Or perhaps by now you’ve met! There in your place of verdure and repose. I very much hope that is the case. If you see Larry, please give him my love.

Ah, I just now remember that I do have some further Romanian to offer: Hristos a înviat. Adevărat a înviat. Assuming that much is true, I look forward to our meeting in that bright and verdant expanse if and when my own heart concludes to call it quits.

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