A journalist and Voprosy Literatury’s regular interviewer E. Konstantinova talks to the contemporary poet S. Stratanovsky, bringing up topics of his artistic philosophy and poetics, looking back at his publications in samizdat collections and association with the so-called ‘second culture’ of a censorship-free literary Leningrad, and following up with his contemporary publications in thick literary journals and opinions about poetry of the 2000s — 2010s. Konstantinova’s questions concern modern interpretation of classic quotations — by Pushkin or Tyutchev, the special ‘poet’s behaviour,’ the attitude towards Soviet poetry, etc. Stratanovsky’s concise and levelheaded answers not only provide the reader with a key to his own lyrical poetry but also present familiar works by 19th- and 20th-c. poets (e. g., E. Bagritsky, V. Khodasevich, and others) in a new light; in addition, they introduce poems by Stratanovsky’s fellow members of the so-called Leningrad’s ‘second culture.’