Before the chill in U.S.-Soviet relations, poetry rather than politics was the symbol of the Soviet Union's break with Stalinism, and at lecture halls across America in the 1960s and '70s, Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky were Russian poetry's most distinguished ambassadors. This month Yevtushenko, 51, and Voznesensky, 52, are in the U.S. on an unofficial but widely praised visit. Voznesensky, his country's greatest living poet, took the opportunity to accept belatedly a 1984 honorary degree from Oberlin College, where he inveighed against "barbarians of every age," and intoned: "For an artist trueborn/ revolt is second nature:/ he is both tribune/...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
