The reader should never expect the poet to write his own autobiography; in most cases, poets never do this. The poet, by and large, never has to count on being given the right to present his own life to the reader in the way the poet himself would wish. Lynor Goralik's long-term project, Private Individuals: Biographies of Poets as Told by Themselves, is an attempt to give today's poets the freedom to tell their story on their own terms. The current - first - volume of "Private Individuals" includes autobiographies of thirteen poets - Mikhail Aizenberg, Sergei Zavyalov, Vladimir Gandelsman, Alexander Barash, Alexey Tsvetkov, Vera Pavlova, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Fyodor Swarovsky, Sergei Gandlevsky, Alexander Skidan, Elena Fanailova and Boris Khersonsky.