Volume 34, Number 19 · December 3, 1987
Ringing the Button
By Elaine Feinstein
An Arrow in the Wall: Selected Poetry and Prose
by Andrei Voznesensky, edited by William Jay Smith, by F.D. Reeve
Holt, 344 pp., $22.95
When Yevtushenko and Voznesensky began to tour the world in the 1960s, they entered the Western imagination as more than celebrities. Perhaps only Allen Ginsberg came close to achieving a comparable effect, and saying as much suggests one reason for a certain unease in present-day assessments of these writers. The preference for poetry that lives in words on the page, without the benefit of voice and presence, has once again reasserted itself. There are other reasons for one's unease, however. The most important of these, suspicion of Russian poets who are not seen to oppose the regime, was given expression in this journal by Clive James some years ago,[1] and continues to be widely felt; hence no doubt the stress the editors of this volume lay upon poems such as 'The Driver,' in which the Caesar hailed in Soviet Georgia is clearly Stalin. Other responses are to do with our perception of what is acceptable poetry in translation.
Review, 2207 words
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