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Other lines evoke the imagery and attitudes of Auden and Whitman. But for the most part Voznesensky recalls no one except himself. This courageous and unique writer never retreats into metaphysics, never merchandises the jargon of protest. Though all of his works concern human rights, most are addressed to the human condition: to accidental death and still more accidental love, to the encroachments of the state, to the ives of ordinary citizens of any country who will not succumb to blind authority or cheap despair.
On each page the poet attempts to contemplate his epoch with the emotions of a participant and the eye of a future observer. The task is impossible; one can no more feel authentic nostalgia for the present than get in front of one's nose. In the end, Voznesensky does not emerge with perfection, but with something better: rare and unsuspected truths that are the great goals of poetry. In the author's indelible metaphor:
The poet thrusts his body like a tolling bell against the dome of insults. It hurts. But it resounds. — Stefan Kanfer
In Russia 14,000 people gathered in a Moscow sports stadium last year to hear Andrei Voznesensky read his verse. As many as 500,000 Soviet citizens have subscribed to buy a volume of his poetry. In the U.S. more modest but still impressive numbers of students jam college auditoriums whenever the poet pays a visit. In New York City after a two-month, 21-campus tour (his fifth in the U.S. since 1966), Voznesensky charted his journey past the language barrier in America.
"At first I was exotic," the 45-year-old poet recalls in fluent, strongly accented English. "People were listening to me more for the sound of my poetry than for the sense. It helped that in those days I was writing in a more musical and aggressive style than I am now. My work was also more constructivist. You could see, and even hear, how my poetry was made: the rhythm, rhymes, associations and metaphors. My poems were easy to catch hold of. When my book, Antiworlds, came out in English, translated by W.H. Auden and other marvelous poets, it prepared audiences for the more delicately orchestrated poetry I've been writing lately. It's more surreal, analytical and elusive—quite impossible to catch."
On his current tour, Voznesensky's readings have been more muted than his galvanic performances of the '60s and early '70s. In those days he would scuttle back and forth across the stage in spurts of convulsive energy, flailing the air with one hand while his powerful baritone voice rolled with the rhythms and assonances of such poems as Goya, his now famous war dirge. ("I am Goya/ of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged/ till the craters of my eyes gape."