The autobiographical prose of Boris Abramovich Slutsky (1919–1986), one of the most profound and original poets of the war generation, is much less known than his poems, although no less brilliant. The fact is that it was written for itself (or for posterity) without the hope of being published during its lifetime for censorship reasons. “A cast on a wound is Slutsky’s poetics,” said David Samoilov. “Slutsky expresses in prose what cannot be put into poetry dimensions, chained in iambs." His “Notes on the War” (and the poet went through it all - “from bell to bell”) is the prose of an intelligent, deep and extremely honest person with himself; it shows the tragedy of the war without embellishment, without smoothing out the sharp edges. The section “About Others and About Oneself” presents Slutsky’s memories of his comrades in the literary workshop - N. Aseev, A. Akhmatova, I. Erenburg, N. Zabolotsky, A. Tvardovsky, I. Selvinsky, S. Narovchatov, M. Kulchitsky , as well as the history of some of his most famous poems. The section “From the Desk” includes fragmentary memoirs, distinguished by the same brilliance and laconicism as all of Slutsky’s prose. Most of the materials included in the book are published for the first time