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cristian popescu
Cristian Popescu (1959-95) published only three books during his short life. Almost entirely prose
poetry, Popescu's oeuvre was groundbreaking in Romanian literary tradition through its creation of a model of
transforming individual life, and it remains highly influential to this day. Before the December 1989 revolution
that overthrew the communist regime, Popescu published two books: the chapbook The Popescu Family (1987)
and Foreword (1988), a collection much diminished by the regime's censorship. After 1990, a single
book, The Popescu Art (1994), appeared the year before his death. In 1999, the National Romanian
Literature Museum in Bucharest published a commemorative album of manuscript reproductions as issues 1-4 of
its new review, Manuscriptum, which also displayed Popescu's whimsical drawings and doodles to
accompany his text. Fragments of his journal were published in 2003 as Notebook of Reading and Calligraphy,
and additional volumes are planned. Many of his poems develop a kind of family romance of the Popescus,
a quirky, surreal biographical myth rendered in a comic, mocking, and self-mocking vernacular voice.
Popescu suffered from schizophrenia, and he died a few months shy of thirty-six from a heart attack
induced by the lethal combination of his medications for schizophrenia and depression with vodka.
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published by TSP:
Memory Glyphs
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