In 1938 his father was repressed during the Great Purge, and in 1940 Glazkov was thrown out of university as a relative of an enemy of the people.

He worked odd jobs such as loading trucks and sawing lumber, all the while publishing poetry both officially and unofficially.

He made a cameo appearance as the peasant in the hot air balloon at the beginning of Tarkovsky's 1966 film Andrei Rublev.

On one hand, he was known for neologisms and clever use of the Russian language to make seemingly impossible rhymes.

He would also translate poetry from nearly every language, often showing off with disrespect of the original work such as sticking in parts of other poems in the middle.