Boris Slutsky (1919 – 1986) was born in Sloviansk, Ukrainian SSR, in 1919 into a Jewish family. He grew up in Kharkov. He first attended a lito (literary studio) at the Kharkov Pioneers Palace but left due to pressure from his father, who dismissed Russian poetry as a career. In 1937, he entered the Law Institute of Moscow, and also studied at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute from 1939 till 1941. He joined a group of young poets that included M. Kulchitzki, Pavel Kogan, S. Narovchatov, David Samoilov and others who … called themselves “the Generation of 1940”. Slutsky would become the only Russian poet who made the Holocaust a central focus of his writing. In 1941–1945, he served in the Red Army as a politruk of an infantry platoon. His war experiences are reflected in his poetry. In 1957, Slutsky’s first book of poetry, Memory, was published. Together with David Samoylov, Slutsky was probably the most important representative of the War generation of Russian poets and, because of the nature of his verse, a crucial figure in the post-Stalin literary revival. His poetry is deliberately coarse and jagged, prosaic and conversational. As early as in 1953–1954, prior to the 20th Congress of CPSU, poems that condemned the Stalinist regime were attributed to Slutsky. These were circulated in “Samizdat” in the 1950s and in 1961 were published in an anthology in Munich.

Edward M. Hunt (1951-2021) was an American poet and song writer who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. “Hollywood Hero” was copyrighted in 1986. Though Hunt couldn’t read music, being a musician was central to his identity. From 1969 to 2003 he wrote a number of songs and an unpublished novel, “William B. Yeats and the Infield Fly Rule.” You can hear Hunt perform “Hollywood Hero” here.