The Collected Poems, 1952-1990

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Albert C. Todd, James Ragan (Editor)

This comprehensive collection of the world-renowned poet's verse spans Yevgeny Yevtushenko's entire poetic life. Amazing in its thematic range and stylistic breadth, his poetry "leaps continents and covers war and peace, intolerance and human striving . . . a passionate and essential edition of his collected poems" ( The New York Times).

Genres: Poetry, Russia, Russian Literature

662 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Евгений Евтушенко
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (Russian: Евгений Александрович Евтушенко; born 18 July 1933 in Zima Junction, Siberia) is a Soviet and Russian poet. He is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The twentieth century has often fooled us.
We've been squeezed in by falsehood as by taxes.
The breath of life has denuded our ideas
as quickly as it strips a dandelion.

- - -

The white nights—an unbroken mass of maybes.
Something is shimmering, strangely worrying me.
Maybe it's the sun, but maybe it's the moon.
Brand-new ships' officers wander about,
maybe in Archangel, maybe in the Marseille,
maybe in sadness, maybe in joy.

- - -

Night licked the fires like wounds.
The stars stare with the eyes of a prison,
but we are beneath the Bridge of Salazar—
in its blacker than black shadow.

- - -

Say thanks to your tears.
Don't hurry to wipe them.
Better to weep and to be.
Not to be is to die.

- - -

The whole world is always in danger
where wooden shoes step over bones,
where they even bathe children in tubs
among unexploded mines.
A poet is always in danger
when he lives too safely,
when everything is deceptively clear to him,
and he is not afraid for people.
The globe is strapped onto me.
Like an exhausted Japanese girl,
I carry the whole world around, like a sobbing
child, on my back.

- - -

With her revolutions and wars,
with her ashes of villages and towns,
with the never-ceasing wailing
of Russian blizzards and Russian widows.

- - -

It's a drag—always behaving well.
It's a bore to behave badly on purpose.
But it's wonderful not to know what you'll do next.
Quite simply, you should live as the ocean does.

- - -

More fearful with the years
and intimidated at times
is the once happy play of color
in your violet eyes

- - -

on the ice-crust of a distant star,
sending signals to people in space,
I will celebrate life like the dead dove,
soaring immortally over the earth.

- - -

No one sleeps more beautifully than you.
But I am afraid
that you will waken just now,
and touch me with an indifferent glance, lightly passing
and commit the murder of beauty.

- - -

All my life—such a mess, my honey.
All I've done —a false kind of bliss.
But I'm made from forget-me-nots.
I can't forget a single kiss!

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm marking this as read -- but do you ever finish reading poetry? Especially Yevteshenko's haunting poetry? His poem Babi Yar, about the Nazi massacre of 33,000 Jews and Ukrainian resistance fighters in Kiev in 1941, is one of the best poems I have ever read. And it changed history -- at least the perception of history -- in Soviet Russia when, 25 years after the slaughter he wrote, "There is not monument at Babi Yar, A precipice sheer as a crude gravestone...." Now there is a monument there.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is worth finding just for the poem "Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty", a work about meeting and breaking glasses in celebration with Robert Kennedy, that ends in the eventual tragedy. A truly humanistic and visionary writer, Yevtushenko doesn't receive the recognition that he probably should. Definitely someone you should become acquainted with if you are a great fan of modern poetry. "Antediluvian" is another favorite of mine. I hope this review can convince someone to pick up his work and give him a try, if for nothing else than a to fulfill yearning to a simpler time of mere cold war between superpowers and the forbidden and exotic nature of all things Eastern European and Soviet, although I would argue that these works transcend all of that and eventually belong to the whole world.

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

And, years later, I remember your name and think: old love, T. Old love.

"My love will come..."
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Translated by Albert C. Todd

            To B. Akhmadulina

My love will come,
will fold me in her arms,
will notice all the changes,
will understand my apprehensions.

From the pouring dark, the infernal gloom,
forgetting to close the taxi door,
she'll dash up the rickety steps
all flushed with joy and longing.

Drenched, she'll burst in, without a knock,
will take my head in her hands,
and from a chair her blue fur coat
will slip blissfully to the floor.

—

First read around 2005-2006.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read Yevtushenko since I was a school kid, but refreshed my memory the other day courtesy of the internet. I rather liked this:

Waiting

My love will come
will fling open her arms and fold me in them,
will understand my fears, observe my changes.
In from the pouring dark, from the pitch night
without stopping to bang the taxi door
she’ll run upstairs through the decaying porch
burning with love and love’s happiness,
she’ll run dripping upstairs, she won’t knock,
will take my head in her hands,
and when she drops her overcoat on a chair,
it will slide to the floor in a blue heap.

[Ruth B · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow. i haven't thought about this one in a long time. i recall the first time i picked it up. no kidding, i was stuck in bangor, maine at a funny little bistro called "phnom pam's" where they specialized in fantastic hot chocolate. anyway, this wonderful poet really got me through a long night. i guess the blue heron really knows about the lunar surface.

[Anna Zenchenkova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Мне совсем чуть-чуть не хватило глубины, но вечера были проведены тем не менее превосходно.
___________________

Качался старый дом, в хорал слагая скрипы,
и нас, как отпевал, отскрипывал хорал.
Он чуял, дом-скрипун, что медленно и скрытно
в нем умирала ты, и я в нем умирал.

«Постойте умирать!»- звучало в ржанье с луга,
в протяжном вое псов и сосенной волшбе,
но умирали мы навеки друг для друга,
а это все равно что умирать вообще.

А как хотелось жить! По соснам дятел чокал,
и бегал еж ручной в усадебных грибах,
и ночь плыла, как пес, косматый, мокрый, черный,
кувшинкою речной держа звезду в зубах.

Дышала мгла в окно малиною сырою,
а за моей спиной - все вилела спина! -
с платоновскою Фро, как с найденной сестрою,
измученная мной, любимая спала.

Я думал о тупом несовершенстве браков,
о подлости всех нас - предателей, врунов:
ведь я тебя любил, как сорок тысяч братьев,
и я тебя губил, как столько же врагов.

Да, стала ты другой. Твой злой прищур нещаден,
насмешки над людьми горьки и солоны.
Но кто же, как не мы, любимых превращает в таких,
каких любить уже не в силах мы?

Какая же цена ораторскому жару,
когда, расшвырян вдрызг по сценам и клише,
хотел я счастье дать всему земному шару,
а дать его не смог - одной живой душе?!

Да, умирали мы, но что-то мне мешало
уверовать в твое, в мое небытие.
Любовь еще была. Любовь еще дышала
на зеркальце в руках у слабых уст ее.

Качался старый дом, скрипел среди крапивы
и выдержку свою нам предлагал взаймы.
В нем умирали мы, но были еще живы.
Еще любили мы, и, значит, были мы.

Когда-нибудь потом (не дай мне бог, не дай мне!),
когда я разлюблю, когда и впрямь умру,
то будет плоть моя, ехидничая втайне,
«Ты жив!» мне по ночам нашептывать в жару.

Но в суете страстей, печально поздний умник,
внезапно я пойму, что голос плоти лжив,
и так себе скажу: «Я разлюбил. Я умер.
Когда-то я любил. Когда-то я был жив».

[Sinan Öner]

Soviet Russian Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "The Collected Poems, 1952-1990" is very useful source to see Yevtushenko's poetry! Yevtushenko was one of the Greatest Poets in 20. Century. Yevtushenko's poetry contains different subjects, sensitivities, feelings, thoughts and impressions. Yevtushenko suggests "poetically freedom", "ethically rationalism", "politically social democracy" in his poetry. Yevtushenko was one of the famous Members of Soviet Communist Party who changed Soviet conditions of life since 1956 20. Congress, by the Kruschev rule. Then, Yevtushenko joined Brezhnev's leadership to develop Soviet nations. In Gorbachev rule, Yevtushenko becomes an advisor of Soviet Communist Party, Yevtushenko played a role for the practice of Gorbachev's "Perestroika" and "Glasnost" programs for the Soviet Union. Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "The Collected Poems, 1952-1990" summarizes poetically Yevtushenko's life in Soviet Communist Party who ruled the Soviet Union - Yevtushenko's poetry was a history of Soviet society in poetical forms.

[Lawrence Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yevtushenko is always challenging but I learned to relax and let the words flow. Having no Russian I can’t evaluate the translations but I found almost everything interesting, especially his decades-long transition from Communism to honest doubt. He is an unreliable narrator, of course, as evidenced by his dodgy (tho’ fascinating) A Precocious Autobiography, but, after all, Communists can never be trusted, and poets embrace chaos in order to shape it into meaning. He respects his readers and asks them to think about life with him.

This is a popular anthology but might be intimidating to someone new to Yevtushenko.

I bought for 75 cents the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback of Yevtushenko at the airport in San Francisco, the first book I purchased upon returning home from Viet-Nam. It contains many of the essentials – “Zima Junction,” “Babi Yar,” and others – and I am happy that Penguin still publishes it with a somewhat different title. This might serve as a useful introduction to some of Yevtushenko’s better-known poems.

[Martin Weigand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933-2017) was one of the greatest poets to have ever lived. And I love this translation of his poems, it is easily the BEST of the translations of his poems. There are so many in this collection it is hard to chose just one, but if I had to, it would be, "White Snow is Falling..."

[Taliarochminska · Rating 5 out of 5]

remarkable thoughts of remarkable man,
particularly highly recommend Людей неинтересных в мире нет.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely some startling, interesting language here, and many of the poems stick with you. Others not so much. The landscape and political figures here are Russian, foreign and often sad.