"Flags" by Boris Poplavsky is one of the most important poetry collections of the younger generation of the first wave of Russian emigration. It was published in 1931, changing the face of Russian poetry. Surreal imagery, tragic intonation and the torment of an emigrant's fate are embodied in the book, revealing to the reader images of “trochaic death” (according to M. L. Gasparov) and individual stoicism in the face of it. “The charm of Poplavsky’s poems is a very strong charm,” wrote G. Ivanov, “The power of “unearthly joy” that spreads from “Flags” can be compared, without any blasphemy, with the impression from Bely’s “Symphonies” and even from “Poems about the Beautiful Lady." According to Georgy Adamovich, Merezhkovsky, at one meeting after Poplavsky’s death, said that Poplavsky alone would be more than enough to justify emigrant literature on all future trials. Adamovich himself wrote that Poplavsky was “extraordinarily talented, talented through and through, to the marrow of his bones, in every casually dropped phrase.” And about his poems - that he was truly obsessed with poetry, was “a poet by the grace of God.” Compiled by: Elena Menegaldo Artist: Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky