The bed-rock of Armenian poetry is a strong and revered folklore tradition that has produced many outstanding poets from the Middle Ages to modern times, both in Eastern and Western Armenia. As the country and its writers opened up to Western modernism, a huge variety of thematic interactions were sparked between traditional Armenian forms and the innovations that Soviet censorship had suppressed. These poems, and Arminé Tamrazian's delicate, sensitive translations, show that sparks continue to fly. Poets include Hrachya Sarukhan, Violet Grigorian, Khachik Manoukyan, Azniv Sahakyan, Anatoli Hovhannisyan, and Hasmik Simonian.