Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Russian poetry since his teens until near the end of his days. His first collection of poems dates from 1916, when the author was a student of Tenishev Institute in St. Petersburg. Nabokov remembers those poems with the words: "My first book of verses was exceptionally bad, had the merit of being instantly destroyed by critics to notice him." Another collection of poems was published in 1918 but went unnoticed. In emigration he published poems in newspapers and magazines, often under the pseudonym V. Sirin, but critics of the time accused him of old fashioned, classic and even banal. His poetry has been collected in some collections of poems published in Berlin (Cluster and Hiking trail in 1923, Chorba's return in 1930), Paris (Poems 1929-1951), or the USA (Poems and Problems 1970).
It is true that his poetry has been overshadowed by the greatness of his prose, and even has remained hidden behind the brilliance of the great Russian writers of the twentieth century lyric: Jodasévich, Esenin, Axmátova, Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky or Bunin. But Nabokov's poems have stood the test of time and we face living in today, full of strength and attractive.