Pyotr Vail's new book, "Poems About Me," reaffirms his reputation as an inventor of new genres. Together with his longtime co-author Alexander Genis, he introduced new formats with books like "Russian Cooking in Exile" and "Classroom Reading," which reinvented the Russian cookbook and the traditional Russian literature curriculum, respectively. Vail's solo career has included the bestseller "Genius Loci," which intertwined the histories of famous cities with the lives of famous people, fusing the genres of travelogue and Plutarch-style biography.

Vail's books are also intensely personal, with funny or sad stories taken from his own life. Coming from some people, this could seem disgusting, but in Vail's case it is endearing. The author's personality encompasses almost everything: He presents himself variously as a member of the working class, as a drunk (fittingly for a Russian intellectual), as a ladies' man, as a seasoned traveler, as a sports aficionado, as a gourmet and as an accomplished cook -- all in a life that has never been free of a regular, salary-based occupation. Amazing.

As its title suggests, "Poems About Me" brings this autobiographical streak to a logical conclusion. Recently issued by the Moscow publishing house Colibri, it is an anthology of several dozen 20th-century poems, some of them rather long, that have played an important role in the author's life in one way or another. Sometimes Vail doesn't really bother with the "about me" stuff -- he just writes a brief commentary on the poem and its author, a sort of "one-poem analysis," a genre of literary scholarship once popular in Russia, but without the boring bits. Other times, he seems to neglect the poem altogether, as in his essay for Nikolai Zabolotsky's surreal "Wedding," where he describes attending the wedding of an old high-school flame. But in the end, it turns out that Vail's disturbing experience was directly connected to Zabolotsky's uncanny imagery.

Some people think that the reader of poetry is a figure slowly drifting into the past; indeed, poetry in today's world is confined to its own small circle. But Vail, obviously an avid poetry reader, disproves that cliche by connecting famous poems with some very personal experiences that anyone can relate to. And his chain of poems goes all the way from the masterpieces of the Silver Age to the present-day writings of Alexei Tsvetkov and Sergei Gandlevsky. These are Vail's personal friends, of course, but they are also excellent poets. It is always worth reminding people that poetry is among us, and, even more importantly, that the writings of poets are not just about themselves -- they are about us all.