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

1 - Morning Prayer

2 - "Children - extraterrestrial..."

3 - Winter Morning

4 - "We watched the falling snow..."

5 - "Mother - twenty eight..."

6 - "Tell me why I shouldn't suck on icicles..."

7 - "In a snowbank..."

8 - The hobby-horse

9 - "My bike is immense..."

10 - "Onto the ice..."

11 - "Thirty years already..."

12 - Mama

13 - "Grandma, let's buy..."

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..."

19 - The sick doll

20 - Doll's funeral

21 - "They grew quiet, quavering..."

22 - Waltz

23 - "My primary talent..."

24 - "Musician, philosopher, poet..."

25 - New doll

26 - "My brother lied on grandma's bed..."

27 - Mazurka

28 - "Sweets and toys..."

29 - "The hell of the quiet hour..."

30 - Russian song

31 - "Mushroom in the sun..."

32 - "To run around nude..."

33 - The accordion player

34 - Kamarinskaya

35 - Polka

36 - Italian song

37 - "A woman moves in fourths..."

38 - Old French song

39 - "You lose a father..."

40 - German song

41 - "As in movies..."

42 - "Grandma wouldn't let him..."

43 - Neapolitan Song

44 - "I once used to live with my mommy..."

45 - "These guys..."

46 - "Stumped on the very first line..."

47 - Nanny's tale

48 - "Chrysanthemums in a brass basin..."

49 - "River, summer and time..."

50 - Baba Yaga

51 - "The group in extended day..."

52 - Sweet day dream

53 - "The observer's view is grim..."

54 - "Uniform to school..."

55 - Lark song

56 - "Water too deep?..."

57 - "The river is aflare..."

58 - "Along the berry path..."

59 - Organ grinder sings

60 - "The winding gibberish grows mild..."

61 - In a church

62 - "These prayers might come across..."