the morning after

verbiage
much of it indiscernible
some of it clear and potent like russian vodka
filtered over my mind like smoke

yevgeny yevtushenko performed at
st cloud state university last night

he was held out to us by the sympathetic
voices of global awareness at the college
as the necessary rebellious voice in 20th century
russian poetry indeed the whole culture

yevgeny himself lamented the success
of the russian communist government
in suppressing poetic voices
killing intimidating imprisoning
the voices
but he added
russian journalists came through
russian journalists were stronger than the poets

strange to see upwards of 300 people at
a poetry reading

the torment for me was the less than perfect
sound system...it was a curse
ignorance is involved
the irony was that we were kept waiting
in the foyer of the auditorium while
the "technicians" did a thorough sound check

a rabbi read the famous poem
Babbi Yar in translation
recounting the horrendous murder
of 35,000 innocent people
most of them jews in 1941
at the hands of the nazis

accepting the fact that there was nothing to be done
about the sound system i sat back and decided to use
my other senses primarily my eyes
for in the end
yevtushenko is a brilliant actor
he knows the relationship between words
and human gestures
as a way of conveying the sense of words
beyond the sound

his command of the full array of
human emotion was really something to see
from the darkest to the lightest

it becomes apparent while thinking about yevtushenko
that he is primarily a political poet
while not above the sentiments of love
or the inward reflections of the mind
his verses speak primarily to political consciousness
and the desire in the human heart for freedom

if a clear apprehension of the words did not come through so well
this fact certainly did

he staged a duet process with one of his translators
whereby stanzas were alternated in
english and russian
and i appreciated this for the expressiveness
of the russian language perhaps exaggerated a bit
and animated by the personality of yevtushenko
yet still somehow mysteriously pleasing to the ear
even in the event of complete ignorance

the poetry reading was not dry or boring
or marked with some pretense of
well-theorized poetix

yevtushenko is a poet who cannot help
but be engaged in the immediate human context
he solicited assistance from at least
5 other readers young and older
and in his presentation he spoke
at the level of the human heart
a quiet and clownish demand for
adamant recognition of the immeasurable value
of every human soul
and the outrage against those who would
ignore this fact

based on his poem Babbi Yar alone
yevgeny will hold a place in world poetry
of the 20th century
and it became apparent as i listened
to the presentation of the rabbi
that yevtuchenko
while not being jewish
took the step to become a jew
at least to realize his solidarity
with the jewish predicament
in the world as somehow paradigmatic
for all political oppression based on fear
and the dangers inherent in
the pretenses of political power

yevgeny's poetry demands attention
it demands the full attention of the intellect
and the full attention of self awareness in the world
he asserts with his whole being that
one necessary function of poetry is
to
"speak truth to power"
to use a late 20th century cliche'

in my knowledge i have only robert bly to point to
as one who is willing to take the poetry reading
and move it beyond mere intellectual amusement
willing to act willing to prance off the stage
into the audience
willing to act out the words the ideas
the scenery
so that even an unsuspecting child
might look on and understand
something important is happening
there's a serious clown in the room

in the hands of yevtushenko poems are not
cerebral statements
but
the fully charged expressions of dramatic engagement
with others with the world
more like a love affair than a media event