Collected Poems FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Even poetry aficionados who think they know Yevtushenko's work well will be startled and delighted by this massive volume edited by Todd, professor of Russian literature at Queens College in New York City, and Regan, professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California. The public poet of ``Babi Yar'' and ``Heirs of Stalin'' can be ruthlessly introspective. In lyric after impassioned lyric, the Siberian-born bard flails himself for his own personal failures, which he links to the spiritual failure of Russia. Lean and clean, steely and direct, his best poems speak urgent truths with disarming simplicity. Alongside the platform orator whose verses can seem hasty or superficial we get the beguilingly tender love poet, the maxim-laden folk poet, the seismograph who registers life's slightest shocks with conversational spontaneity. Translators for this compendium--really a ``selected poems'' gathered from Yevtushenko's 43 volumes of verse--include Richard Wilbur, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Stanley Kunitz, John Updike. The most recent selections capture the confusion of glasnost (``Half measures can kill''). (Jan.)
Library Journal
The Russian poet's lyric intensity and political outspokenness have earned him an enormous following in the Soviet Union and abroad. Based on Yevtushenko's own selections from the complete six-volume Russian edition, this collection is fluently translated by many distinguished poets, among them Richard Wilbur, Stan ley Kunitz, and D.M. Thomas. Helpful textual annotations explain the many geographical and historical references, making the poems more accessible to the general reader. In an era of glasnost, this will be a welcome addition to all library collections.-- Christine Stenstrom, New York Law Sch. Lib.
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