Dear Popescu (continued)

—epistles to a lost brother

My brother! The book has arrived! As delightful as I had hoped, had expected—surprising, even so. I hadn’t expected this selection of your work to begin with a dramatic monologue presented as the speech of your mother. I, too, often set my words in other people’s mouths, most often when I suspect the import of my lines to be wandering toward some opinion or other for which I do not wish to take full blame, nor full heat. I admire, also, how your monologue slips twice into something else in reference to the central utterance—not therefore a dialogue, per se, but a gentle and affirmative aside spoken by… you?

Regardless, your dramatic personae seem as welcoming and affectionate as yourself, every bit as understanding and apologetic as your own voice sounds in those poems that come off as being more nearly spoken in your own voice, or, perhaps, in one or another of your several voices. So much play and no little pain manifested here! All of it limning what are presumably biographical facts with charm and surprise and revelation—the last dream set like a crystal between the temples, subsequently bequeathed to you, the soup spoon trembling at the lip.