Yevgeny Yevtushenko Critical Essay | Critical Review by Patricia Pollock Brodsky

Critical Review by Patricia Pollock Brodsky

SOURCE: Brodsky, Patricia Pollock. Review of The Collected Poems 1952-1990, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. World Literature Today 66, no. 1 (winter 1992): 156-57.

In the following review, Brodsky praises Yevtushenko's accessibility and the power of visual details in his poetry.

The new Collected Poems 1952-1990 reflects YevgenyYevtushenko's poetic career in microcosm: vast and uneven, sometimes irritating, often appealing, and ever astonishing in its variety. The title is somewhat misleading, since the volume offers only a selection from Yevtushenko's extensive oeuvre, and in addition, several long poems are represented in excerpts only. Yevtushenko's allusiveness can be a problem for Western readers; a few names and terms are explained in footnotes, but this practice could profitably have been expanded. A helpful feature is the chronological list of poems with their Russian titles, date and place of first publication, and location, if any, in the 1983 Sobranie sochineniĭ (see WLT 59:4, p. 614).

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