A native of Brăila on the Bărăgan Plain, he was heavily influenced by the worldview of an older novelist, Panait Istrati, as well as by the poetic works of Mihai Eminescu and Edgar Allan Poe.

His political poetry pioneered the conceptions of socialist realism from as early as 1946; from 1948, the cultural authorities of Communist Romania employed him as editor of Viața Romînească, literary expert, translator of Russian literature, and purveyor of agitprop—though he was also excluded from the Party, and deemed ideologically unreliable, in 1950.

In his late thirties and early forties, Dragomir also contributed to the Romanian science fiction scene and, upon witnessing the first manifestations of national-communism, inaugurated his own transition to philosophical, largely non-political, poetry; this included publishing work that he had authored in previous decades.

[1] Musician Claudiu Moldovan claims that, due to his "brown complexion" and familiarity with Lăutari songs, Mihu Dragomir was mistakenly seen by Romanies as belonging to their own ethnic community.

[1] Dragomir also returned to publishing with short poetry collections: Rugă de ateu, adică vorbe despre orânduieli și cârmuitori ("An Atheist's Prayer, Which Is to Say a Talk of Regimes and Rulers", 1938) and Înger condeier ("Scribbling Angel", 1939).

Magazines that published his work include Universul Literar, Luceafărul, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Viață și Suflet, Năzuința, Junimea Dobrogeană, Raza Literară, Cadran, Festival, Păcală, and Epigrama.

"[10] In 2005, literary historian Geo Șerban spoke of Dragomir's admiration for the Guardist leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, as a "juvenile conviction that poetry will gain its vitality once it embraces the arsenal of Codrenist ideology."

[24] From 1945 to 1946, he was cultural officer in the Romanian Communist Party-affiliated Organization of Progressive Youth (UTP),[1] while his wife, known as "Titi", was employed in an identical position by the Union of Antifascist Women.

[28] An editor at the Brăila newspaper Înainte from 1946 to 1948,[1] he wrote to Vrînceanu that he was "studying Leninism", that he had attempted to set up a circle of Esperanto speakers, and that he considered entering academia or the diplomatic service.

According to literary scholar Niculae Stoian, samples of his work in the field include an Eminescu lecture at Bucharest's Dalles Hall, as well as an "extremely courageous" study of Doina, hosted by Înainte in 1949.

The anonymous author alleged that Dragomir had once misplaced his personal papers in a public area, upon which the Securitate had stumbled upon evidence that he had been a wartime informant, involved with "staking out" a communist activist, Manole H.

[17] The poetry books he put out during the time were Prima șarjă ("The First Assault", 1950), Stelele păcii ("Star of Peace", 1952), Războiul ("The War", 1954), Tudor din Vladimiri (1954), Pe struna fulgerelor ("On the String of Lightnings", 1955), Versuri alese ("Selected Verse", 1957), and Odă pământului meu ("An Ode to My Land", 1957).

[40] Around that time, Editura Cartea Rusă received his translations of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Konstantin Simonov, as well as the entirety of Alexander Yashin's Alena Fomina (the latter as a collaboration with C.

[55] Staff colleagues included poet Petru Vintilă, who recalled in 1988: "Mihu Dragomir, with his dark complexion and fleshy lips, led our meetings, watching us through eyes covered by I couldn't tell you how many diopters of lenses [...].

[57] His work as a translator also covered H. G. Wells, John Steinbeck, and Lope de Vega;[1] he also had noted contributions as a literary historian, with new essays on Eminescu, Alexandru Macedonski, and George Ranetti.

[42][59] By then, Dragomir had been integrated within a new generation of Romanian science fiction authors, with samples taken up by the literary supplement of Știință și Tehnică magazine;[60] such prose appeared in 1962 as Povestiri deocamdată fantastice ("Stories for Now Fantastic").

[63][64] His widow Chira (known in full as Chiriachița Dragomirescu)[30] kept over 1,000 unpublished poems of his,[65] which came out as additional volumes: Pămîntul cîntecului ("Land of Song", 1967), Dor ("Longing", 1969), Minutar peste netimp ("A Minute Hand over Nontime", 1974), and Noapte calmă ("A Calm Night", 1980).

Noting this fact, Stoian also proposes that, when Dragomir found his "other masters, such as the American demoniac Edgar Allan Poe, he did not let go of [Eminescu,] his first teacher in matters of poetry and living".

[30] Aurel Martin believes that the Poesque influence, doubled and enhanced by that of Paul Verlaine, created thematic links between Dragomir and a vagabond-poet Dimitrie Stelaru; both men had literary personas whom they depicted as "angels".

[21] Upon reading the youthful pieces only included in Noapte calmă, Florența Albu, herself a poet, concluded that they were "uneven", alternating extremist stances with "gentle poems" about the Danube and the Bărăgan Plain.

[76] Essayist Lucian Raicu sees the latter works as "rare glimpses of calmness and stability", bordering on Eminescu's own depiction of tranquility—and with the therapeutic purpose of "shielding the poet" from "the more painful questions".

Upon publication, his and Climatiano's manifesto, calling for literature to be "anchor[ed] in reality", was welcomed by the communist columnist Paul Cornea, who only chided the "somewhat bloated and at times declamatory style".

[82] Critics of the day, such as Valeriu Cristea, gave enthusiastic appraisals of Dragomir's poetry, but these were contradicted in later years—literary scholars Nicolae Mecu and Adriana Catrina describe his output as forgettable.

"[85] As noted by Negrici, Dragomir, alongside Toma, Tulbure, and Dan Deșliu, "quickly ran through all the social-professional subjects", making it hard for other poets to fulfill the "party command" of writing for and about workers.

[86] Stelele păcii was officially praised in Contemporanul for exploring the life and death of "enlightened workers", for instance by its posthumous ode to Pyotr Pavlenko, "dead at his writing desk.

[96] Its stories depict acts of belated anti-fascist positioning, such as peasants refusing to colonize Transnistria, or soldiers disarming their Wehrmacht colleagues upon hearing that a truce had been signed; these were poorly reviewed in 1963 by journalist I. Miron, who commented on Dragomir's "hastiness" and reliance on "platitudes".

[94] In Inelul lui Saturn, subjects are drawn from the life of Vladimir Lenin and his leading the October Revolution, Pioneer outings, planned urbanization with the construction of tower blocs, and communist symbolism (including the red flag and the Soviet State Emblem).

Poveștile bălții, a work of children's verse, had a main "essentially poetic" topic in the jocular depictions of animals and plants thriving on the Danube Delta, but also included parts in which the "new socialist realities are outlined for our early readers.

"[104] Albu notes the existence of impressive "glades" in his otherwise dogmatic verse, suggesting that Dragomir was an authentic poet in Stelele așteaptă pămîntul, with its lyrical depiction of the Space Race, and especially in the 1960s melancholy cycle, Cuvintele ("The Words"), which only appeared in Noapte calmă.

[107] Struțeanu similarly recalls Dragomir improvising an homage to the swans of the Danube, which mentioned poetic loves (Sappho, Inês de Castro, and Veronica Micle).