Voice of the Grass

Born in 1955 in a Moscow suburb. School, institute, faculty of applied mathematics. Application of engineering knowledge: door upholsterer and tour guide, packer at “Krasny Oktyabr,” programmer at the Bratskaya Hydroelectric Station, and children’s educator. Fifteen years at a small studio theater—from actor and stagehand to screenwriter and director. GITIS School of Directing. Three poetry collections (“Color,” “Sound,” “Color and Sound”—the three sections in the book “The Voice of Grass” correspond to these collections). Poetic credo: philosophical depth and metaphor, clarity and symbol, image and concept—without the full palette, without all the stylistic and technical “tools” associated with it, color, sound, and their jewel-like refinement, poetry today is no longer possible. The book concludes with several prose essays—witty, aphoristic, and full of precise observations. One such judgment, for example: “Russian poetry is a local and astonishing miracle of orderliness in the slovenly Russian world, and the site of the miraculous victory of the Russian language over the Russian people. A victory welcomed by the vanquished.”