Not to be confused with Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu
Virgil Gheorghiu (1903-1977) was a Romanian poet, short story writer and musician. Initially associated with the avant-garde, he directed at Iași the revue XX-revistă contimporană (with Aurel Zaremba, Raul Iulian and other active collaborators) and was also a member of the group around unu. Excomunicated by Sașa Pană from the avant-garde group after publishing texts in Arghezi's revue Bilete de papagal, Gheorghiu went on to become one of the most popular and (at the time) critically acclaimed poets of the moderate modernist poets of the 1930s. He veered into neoclassicism before socialist realism arrived and he stopped publishing poems, preferring instead to focus on his career as a musician. He resumed publishing poems in the 1960s. After his near-complete works were published posthumously, his popularity faded almost completely, but his contributions to the avant-garde were noted by Marin Mincu and a few of his poems were included in Ulici's several-volume anthology O mie și una de poezii românești.