"Things are really bad now, aren't they?" said Andrei Voznesensky, arguably Russia's most popular and influential poet over the past 30 years. "They couldn't get any worse."


Indeed, as 1995 begins, it is easy to be pessimistic about Russia. A bloody war is unfolding in Chechnya, and the air is full of dark rumors of coups and the collapse of democracy. Economic reforms seem to be going nowhere, and the public is exhausted by more than three years of trying. Voznesensky's latest work, "A Fortune-Telling Book," which gathers his poems, graphics and essays from the past four years, is his response to the chaos.


Surprisingly, both Voznesensky himself and his new book are fundamentally optimistic, turning to aesthetics and mysticism to make up for the shortcomings of politics and economics. "Why were people flocking to the Salvador Dali exhibition this summer?" Voznesensky notes. "Life is so surrealistic now that people are seeking answers there."


"A Fortune-Telling Book" is not so much a book to be read as a game to play -- a device for readers to experience Voznesensky's vivid language and imagery directly. The poet is infectiously excited about his latest project, which continues his earlier efforts to fuse visual imagery, sound and written language into something beyond the conventional idea of what a book is.


Fortune-telling, especially during the period around New Year's, is a long-standing Russian tradition, one that Voznesensky exploits to compel his audience to contemplate his rich, concrete imagery. The book comes complete with a tiny wooden ladybug and two "enchanted" Turkish dice that the reader uses to determine page and line numbers in order to predict the future.


Voznesensky's career was largely determined by two unlikely events, feeding his conviction that our lives are shaped by a complex pattern that infuses the ordinary with the mysterious. First, in 1946, the 14-year-old would-be poet sent a selection of his verse to Boris Pasternak, who, surprisingly, responded and initiated a friendship that lasted until the elder poet's death in 1960, almost exactly 14 years later. This apprenticeship, which was so intense that Voznesensky stopped writing for almost two years in order to regain his own voice, taught him that the more concrete and precise the language of poetry is, the more faithfully it conveys the transcendental content of life to the reader.


The second event to push Voznesensky into poetry's embrace was a fire that swept through the Institute of Architecture on the day before Voznesensky was to graduate. It completely destroyed the thesis project on which he had worked for more than a year. He interpreted the fire as a sign that architecture "was burned out in him," and he devoted himself entirely to poetry. Nonetheless, to this day he introduces himself, ironically, as "an architect by training and a dilettante in poetry."


He went on to become the most respected voice of his generation, drawing crowds of more than 10,000 frenzied fans to hear his passionate readings. Today, however, the mild-mannered, personable poet has a different style, although his verse and graphics remain surprisingly true to the spirit of his youthful art. "I don't much feel like holding mass readings these days. One hall, another, then stadiums, and what next? You shout and shout ... But now I want people to understand more, rather than just listen to the music," Voznesensky says.


The chaos of the past three years has proven inspirational for Voznesensky, who thrives on the improbable juxtapositions of events, language and aesthetics that he sees around him every day. He plays, for example, with the pompous clich?s of the Soviet period to describe the present: "We will hear in the distance / How the irrational-liberation movement of the soul is proceeding. / The spring from an armchair juts out of the gloom / Like a monument to the Third Irrationale. / Irrationalists of all countries, welcome / To the congress at the tip of a needle."


His verse and graphics are closely tied to current events, but the best of them succeed in distilling experience to a universal essence, while avoiding vaguenesss and platitudes. At the end of December, his most recent poem, on the events in Chechnya, appeared on the front page of Komsomolskaya Pravda. In it, Voznesensky immortalizes the words of a soldier that capture the terror of modern warfare: "I can't sleep at night / Because of the punishment / Inflicted by the simple words of the tank driver: / 'I cannot grind up women and children / Under the treads of a tank.'"


As the times have become more turbulent, Voznesensky has set himself the difficult task of first unsettling his readers with the novelty of his imagery, then giving them the satisfaction that comes with realizing that each image does indeed have a concrete analogue, and finally leaving them again unsettled with the question, "What does this mean?"


However, the precision of Voznesensky's language keeps his fortune-telling project from drowning in obscure mysticism. The poet himself also treats the idea with a healthy dose of humor. He admits that fortune-telling does not always work, although it often produces eerie results. In mid December, he was invited to use his book to predict Russia's future on live television. The dice indicated the line, "God save us from self-barbarism."


"A Fortune-Telling Book" will be available at the Moskva and other major bookstores after Jan. 13.