Aleksei Parshchikov is a prominent Russian contemporary poet, essay writer, and translator. A natural eccentric, Parshchikov emerged in the 1980s as one of the most innovative poets of the period and passionately advocated a mode of writing known as polystylistics. His poetic landscapes range from the Ukrainian provinces to the Crimea, Moscow, and California. An excellent photographer, Parshchikov combines his phonetic experiments with striking visual imagery. To a great extent his verse develops many tenets of Russian futurist poetry, including primitivist tendencies, subversive structures, sound-painting technique, a predilection for urbanism, and a vigorous employment of harsh words and sounds, together with images that shock. Although various critics label Parshchikov a metarealist poet who displays a strong liking for metaphors, in interviews and personal conversations he prefers to stress the importance of fragmentation and metonymy in his work. Parshchikov's essays and correspondence with several poets and critics provide an...