Paper-thin Skin is the first bilingual collection (in Russian and English) by Aigerim Tazhi, who has broken ground as a Kazakhstani woman poet by gaining widespread international attention. Fish, insects, birds, the sea, the sky, humans seeking connection, and death figure frequently in these succinct poems, as do windows, mirrors, and eyes: these are poems of observation and deep reflection. Tazhi gently insists that we look at words and the world "in the eye," as she seeks to create what translator J. Kates calls a "mystic community of communication."