This book is designed for those who have passed GCE O-Level (a British high school version of America's achievement tests), or who have an equivalent knowledge of the language. The text of the poems is in Russian, there is no translation, but the biographical notes for each poet are in English and there is a Russian-English glossary at the back, which saves the reader from using the dictionary all the time. Included in this collection are the luminaries like Pushkin and Lermontov, as well as the moderns like Akhmatova and Yevtushensko.