“Boris Slutsky, according to this brilliant book, accomplished the seemingly impossible: a poet of Soviet times, he reforged the totality of Russian literary culture, from Church Slavonic to Pushkin to Khlebnikov and beyond, within the crucible of Jewish self-understanding. Marat Grinberg, author of this impressive study, has also accomplished the seemingly impossible. He demonstrates how this supremely Russian poet can and must be read in his totality: “from right to left,” from beginning to end, and from his desk drawer to Red Square.”