The paper discusses dynamics of the ratio of finite verb forms, primarily tenses and
moods, in the whole of Russian poetical tradition from the 18th-century poets (about 50% of present tense and 20–25% of past) through Pushkin's contemporaries (~37% and ~39%, respectively) and later authors to Iosif Brodsky's poems (about 1710 finite verbal forms in A Part of Speech
and the first part of To Urania, 56% and 23% of present and past tenses, respectively). Brodsky
returns to Lomonosov's and Derzhavin’s quantitative verb standards, but reconsiders the main
positions and meanings of the present tense in poetic text.