Virgil Romulus Gheorghiu (March 22, 1908–March 7, 1977) was a Romanian poet and musician. Born in Roman, his father Miltiade Gheorghiu was a career army officer, while his mother was a primary-school teacher. He attended high school in his native town and in Bucharest, also studying piano with Emilia Saegiu (1923-1925) and taking courses from 1925 to 1926 at the Bucharest Conservatory, where his professors included Dumitru Georgescu Kiriac and Alfonso Castaldi. From 1926 to 1926, he lived in Iași, where he participated in the local avant-garde movement. This period followed an inconclusive literary debut with the 1925 book Cântările răsăritului, prefaced by Demostene Botez. In 1928, together with A. Zaremba, he edited the surrealist magazines Prospect and XX, literatură contemporană. From