Vera Pavlova
"My first poem was a note I had written to send home from the maternity ward. I was twenty at the time, and had just given birth to Natasha, my first daughter. That was the kind of a happy experience I had never known before or after. The happiness was so unbearable that for the first time in my life I wrote a poem. I have been writing since, and I resort to writing whenever I feel unbearably happy or unbearably miserable. And since life provides me with experiences of both kinds, and with plenty of them, I have been writing for the past twenty-six years practically without a pause. I cannot afford staying away from writing. It could be called an addiction, but I prefer to describe it as my form of metabolism. "
-Vera Pavlova, Knopf Interview
Children's Album
Selected Poems
2 - "Children - extraterrestrial..."
4 - "We watched the falling snow..."
5 - "Mother - twenty eight..."
6 - "Tell me why I shouldn't suck on icicles..."
11 - "Thirty years already..."
14 - "Mommy, this has to end..."
15 - "Mama was then the axiom..."
16 - March of the wooden soldiers
17 - "Straighten! Hurry up!..."
18 - "Gold, incense, myrrh..."
21 - "They grew quiet, quavering..."
24 - "Musician, philosopher, poet..."
26 - "My brother lied on grandma's bed..."
29 - "The hell of the quiet hour..."
37 - "A woman moves in fourths..."
42 - "Grandma wouldn't let him..."
44 - "I once used to live with my mommy..."
46 - "Stumped on the very first line..."
48 - "Chrysanthemums in a brass basin..."
49 - "River, summer and time..."
51 - "The group in extended day..."
53 - "The observer's view is grim..."
58 - "Along the berry path..."
"Consider me deaf and dumb..."
"Loneliness in the window square..."
"Perhaps, the beating of our bodies..."
"This memory could have been saved..."
"Sunburnt skin - in peeling bits..."
"A little music and some ice..."
"Write so that the pages stick..."
"I bend an endearing gesture..."
"I'm declaring my umbrella opened..."
"There: every human is a string..."
"Those who rest in the earth..."
"Together we sleep and cry..."
"Tenderness can't reap or sow..."
"Shine, rule and conquer the world..."
"One more poet into the world..."
"Loneliness is an infection..."
"And only the errands were certain..."
"The twilight of the single-room..."
"Until we meet again, my dear one..."
"All vows remained in tact..."
"I did not want to leave so much..."
"Draw me in a suit of armor..."
"There's little that parting evokes..."
"They are in love and happy..."
"And yet again, just as before, all ends..."
"Is this why, with so much certainty..."
"I allowed my anger at you to linger..."
"The angelic horde is sweeping..."
"A postman can't lift this cargo..."
"By seven, comes the night..."
"Solitude. Evening. Breaking surf..."
"To not suck in your stomach..."
"The young one sleeps as if..."
"Wild berries to delight in..."
"The ballerina is forbidden..."
"Take what tv dreams reveal..."
"How insufferable the sympathy..."
"I've spent thirty years composing..."
"The busy, crowded summer street..."
"Scratched up legs revealed..."
"Rainbow flashes for a moment..."
"I will forget all past embraces..."
"I was a woman among women..."
"Listen, boys, do not take orders..."