the art of not knowing how to write poetry (arta de a nu ști să scrii poezii), Junimea, 2026
https://editurajunimea.ro/carte/arta-de-a-nu-sti-sa-scrii-poezii/ https://www.librarie.net/p/518280/arta-de-a-nu-sti-sa-scrii-poezii
When I opened Pompilian Tofilescu’s poems, I thought, for a moment, that I should have known him. Recognized him? But small towns too, perhaps because they dream themselves large, are, for better or worse, dysfunctional families. And since childhood is the only tourist responsible, like Scheherazade, for the number of overnight stays, I let it do its job as my sole prejudice for a couple of hours. Long enough to “pirate” the art of not knowing…, to reach the back cover. Where, indeed, I recognize Pompilian “in the hollow between my steps,” as he himself says in one of the beautiful poems here. The hollow, if you like, between the lines of connection and the lines of pause that trace the axis of the road. Because his steps come out onto the open road and, unpunished, dance on the bread and circuses owed to every honorable citizen of Poetry. And from their grace and deliberate disgrace are born the self-portraits of a Papillon who flutters his wings every time the poet who possesses him draws a deep breath. And, I would say, every time the reader who is possessed by his poetry does the same — speaking as one who, fortunately, has been through it.
Adrian BODNARU
In the art of not knowing how to write poetry, Pompilian Tofilescu builds a broad poetic trajectory, one that reveals its true meaning only at the end. The poem “ending” functions as a powerful and necessary reply to the opening text, “the art of not knowing how to write poems,” deliberately contradicting the declaration of uncertainty with which the volume begins. It is an assumed leap into the void, with all the risks such poetic exposure entails — but for Pompilian Tofilescu, the parachute opens. Beyond irony, playfulness, and defiance, the poems possess imagination, tension, and authenticity. Above all, the author demonstrates a remarkable assurance in his use of poetic language, and this expressive freedom recommends the volume better than any critical study could.
Mihai FIRICĂ
If there is one thing that delights above all else in Pompilian Tofilescu’s poems, it is, of course, their freshness. The freshness of the vision, the freshness of the metaphor, of the flashes of ideas beneath which we sense candor and a certain nostalgia. Paradoxically, the author begins his volume by denying his own status as a poet, then moves, with each “antipoem,” toward a rewriting of feelings — sometimes turning them inside out, examining them under a magnifying glass, or falsely defining them. Each poem-experience seems, in the end, to become a step on an immense stairway toward the sky, that sky which draws birds with a gravity stronger than the earth’s — see the poem “upside down” — while the author’s imagination composes the seeds of utterly unexpected worlds. Pompilian Tofilescu is a poet of things seen differently from how they appear, more astonishing in their revelation, awakening in the reader’s spirit an unexpected return to childhood.
Mircea Liviu GOGA