Mikhail Aizenberg is an architect, poet, and essayist. Born in Moscow in 1948, he has been writing poems since the mid 1960s and is also a chronicler and critic of contemporary Russian poetry. His most recent collection, V Metre ot Nas (A Meter Away from Us), was published in 2004; excerpts from it appeared in a bilingual chapbook as Less than a Meter (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004). He contributed poems to and wrote an introductory note for the anthology In the Grip of Strange Thoughts (Zephyr Press, 1999). Zephyr is also publishing a selection of Aizenberg’s poems, Say Thank You, in 2007. “Once level with us…” will appear in the fall in New Russian Poetry, an anthology to be published by Dalkey Archive Press as part of a bilingual project of the National Endowment for the Arts. (updated 2007)