Bokov, Viktor Fedorovich

Bokov, Viktor Fedorovich 

Born Sept. 6 (19), 1914, in the village of Iazvitsy, now in Zagorsk Raion, Moscow Oblast. Soviet Russian poet.

Born into a peasant family, Bokov graduated from the M. Gorky Institute of Literature in 1938. He had begun publishing in 1934. In 1950 a collection compiled by him entitled Russian “Chastushka” was published in the series Biblioteka poeta (The Poet’s Library). Bokov is also the author of the collections of poems Hopbrew the Intoxicator (1958), Jack Planes (1958), Vesna Viktorovna (1961), Wind in the Palms of the Hand (1962), By Field, Sea, and Rivers (1965), Summer-Mint (1966), Alevtina (1968), Svir’ River (1968), and others, in addition to a book of prose miniatures entitled On the Isterma River: A Poet’s Notes (1960). Russian nature, love, and life in kolkhoz villages and workers’ suburbs are the basic topics of Bokov’s lyric poetry, which combines folk poetic elements with the forms of modern poetry. Several poems by Bokov have become popular songs—for example “The Orenburg Downy Shawl,” “Going on Leave,” “Flax, Flax, Flax,” “At the Mamaev Burial Mound,” and others.

WORKS

Lirika. Moscow, 1964. [Foreword by N. Rylenkov.]
Izbrannoe: Stikhi i poema. Moscow, 1970.

REFERENCES

Mikhailov, I. “Shchedraia poeziia.” Neva, 1959, no. 11.
Denisova, I. “Vechno zhivye.” Znamia, 1966, no. 4.