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)