TWO POEMS are here from the youthful but prolific Vladimir Orlov. His Russian roots plant him near the former Soviet Union, which makes poetry traditionally a real, life-or-death issue. When I see the words “sublimated freedom” in “Poetic License,” the writer may be genuflecting on the altar of capitalist western “freedom” led by the United States of America—just a little bit. But we must remind ourselves that Paul Robeson went through great suffering supporting the Soviet Union in spite of American freedom—and in spite of Stalin. Certainly, this can be maddening.

Vladimir Orlov does not overextend himself by trying to incorporate an era before his birth just for the sake of entertaining the exotic for the ignorant. Firmly planted in the present, he reminds us that Russia has life after the iron curtain—and death.