Selected Poems of Andrei Voznesensky

by Andrei Voznesensky

Philip Hackett association - has his Mass. rubber stamp.

Genres: Poetry

129 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1966

About the author

Андрей Вознесенский

Collections of verse of Soviet poet Andrei Voznesenski include Parabola (1960) and The Triangular Pear (1962).

Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky (Russian: Андрей Андреевич Вознесенский) was a Soviet and Russian poet and writer who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the greatest living poets in any language." He was one of the "Children of the '60s," a new wave of iconic Russian intellectuals led by the Khrushchev Thaw.

Voznesensky was considered "one of the most daring writers of the Soviet era" but his style often led to regular criticism from his contemporaries and he was once threatened with expulsion by Nikita Khrushchev. He performed poetry readings in front of sold-out stadiums around the world, and was much admired for his skilled delivery. Some of his poetry was translated into English by W. H. Auden. Voznesenky's long-serving mentor and muse was Boris Pasternak, the Nobel Laureate and the author of Doctor Zhivago.

Before his death, he was both critically and popularly proclaimed "a living classic", and "an icon of Soviet intellectuals".

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snapshot of a very popular Soviet poet of the Sixties, with an interesting sequence documenting Voznesensky's visit to the U.S. Some echoes of Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, but Voznesensky makess it clear his deepest affection is for Lorca.

Sample from "Another Beginning":

Under the firehose spouting out endless driveways
my ears were turning like windmills
O godless gasoline poisonous baseball America
Coca-Cola and tolling bells.

Favorite poems: "Season of Watermelons," "Foggy Street," "Lover of Lorca" (more mini-essay than poem), "Another Beginning," "An Extorted Divagation."

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

my favorites were “who are you”, “they are beating a woman”, and “on the metamorphosis brought about my emotion”

[Jessica Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voznesensky's poems soar and veer like the parabolas he writes about. They are exciting, intellectual, ironic, symbolic, culturally and historically necessary. I wish we in America had not stopped talking about him!


RESEARCH THEMES: twentieth-century and contemporary American and Eastern European literature; literature and censorship; inter- and postwar literature