California without Hollywood (English & Russian)I was born in Donbass (the town Shakhty, Russia) in a family of miners. My childhood and adolescence took place in a difficult time after World War II in one small mining settlement.I first met California, thanks to Hollywood films with Charlie Chaplin, who were very popular at that time in the USSR. Especially remembered the film "City Lights." The musical comedy "Sun Valley Serenade" with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the famous Chattanooga Choo Choo melody was also very popular.Later in my youth I read books by American writers: Jack London, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, poets Emilia Dickinson, Walt Whitman, who told about life in an unknown country of America.Since childhood, two elements have struggled in me: an interest in the exact sciences and a passion for literary creativity. This is not surprising, because the Russian people were brought up on the books of such excellent writers as L.N. Tolstoy, F.I. Dostoevsky, N.V. Gogol, A.P. Chekhov and the poets A.S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Boris Pasternak and others. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the 60-70s of the twentieth century, among the technical intelligentsia, there were eternal disputes between "physicists" and "lyricists." Passion for Russian literature is one of the most common among Russians.I was no exception. I began to write my first poems in early childhood. But then after graduating from high school, I entered the Moscow State University and the exact sciences became my profession. After graduating from university, I worked for many years at one of the leading institutions of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. But poetry has always been my hobby. I wanted my work to be known not only in Russia, but also in other countries. Therefore, I began to study English more thoroughly, so that readers could familiarize themselves with my work in translation. In the late 90s and early 2000s, I began to publish abroad in various poetic journals and anthologies.I was able to visit the USA for the first time in 1993. I have been to many American cities (New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City), but most of all I liked California. Upon returning to Moscow, I published my first book, "My Discovery of America." After that, I repeatedly visited Los Angeles and became increasingly acquainted with the life of this state not only as a world center of the film industry. I tried to express my impressions of California without Hollywood in a poetic form in the proposed collection of poems.Such verses as California, the Pacific sunset, Palm Springs, Encino, Oh, time, you are like the Pacific Ocean, Eternal sleep are near and dear to me. I would like my readers to see California not through the eyes of a tourist, but to feel the specificity of this unusual US state with a poetic feeling.