His tour of the U.S. last year took Soviet Poet Evgeny Evtushenlco 23,000 miles around the country and as far north as Alaska. It gave him the material for America and I Sat Down To gether, a collection of seven poems commissioned by Holiday magazine, some of which have also been published in his homeland. Evtushenko writes sadly of a trip to an Alaska fur farm (He who's conceived in a cage will weep for a cage); sharply of famous people (Allen Ginsberg--cagey prophet-baboon --thumps his hairy chest as a shaman thumps a tambourine); sentimentally of his visit to a steelworker's home (I love America, the America who now sits with me). His distaste for immense, impersonal bureaucracy is suggested in Cemetery of Whales:

You think you're God?

A risky bit of impudence.

One harpoon, smack in the flank,

rewards enormity.

Enormity commands everyone

to hunt for it.

Whoever is big is stupid.

Who's smaller is wiser.

Most Los Angelenos have long since given up hope of beating the traffic snarls on the city's freeways. But here's one working girl has the system licked. Every morning, Kim Novak gallops down a bridle path alongside the Ventura Freeway aboard Big Sur, riding bareback ("I like feeling my horse under me--I can tell if he starts twitching and seems nervous") on her way to Warner Bros, studios. While alert drivers gawk, Kim turns into a side street that leads to the lot. There she tethers Big Sur, goes to star in The Great Bank Robbery--a comedy western about a gang of thieves who make their getaway in a balloon.

Los Angeles' Mayor Sam Yorty is not a man to shirk his civic duty. There he was in front of city hall, amiably lying on a plank supported by two chairs, while a magician hovered nearby. Then the magician slowly removed each chair, leaving the Mayor apparently suspended in midair. The reason for all the levity was an "Academy of Magical Arts" day, proclaimed to promote the cause of magic in L.A. Sam certainly rose to the occasion. "There's often a need for magic in politics," he said. "Why, as mayor, you have to have the ability to be suspended in midair in order to balance the budget."

Dressed in a blue blouse and grey skirt and wearing a new, close-cropped hairdo, Folk Singer Joan Baez looked more like yesterday's gym teacher than today's pop protester. She was beginning to sound different, too, as she conducted a press conference prior to an L.A. one-night stand. On campus demonstrations: "Downright silly. You don't accomplish anything by breaking in and smoking the president's cigars." On the convention demonstrations in Chicago: "Really filthy." On politics: "It is patronizing for white liberals to swing along with the Black Panther Party." But a bit of the old Baez was still there. "The only 'in' thing is resistance to the draft," said Joan, who urged an end to all armies "as long as people are having napalm rained on them instead of rain."

She had firmly insisted that no public places be named after her, but Lady Bird Johnson had not reckoned with Stewart Udall. She watched unsuspecting as the Interior Secretary formally announced the planting of 2,700 dogwood trees and 1,000,000 daffodils on a beautiful 121-acre island park in the Potomac River. Then she sat up with a start as Udall announced that what was Columbia Island will henceforth be known as "Lady Bird Johnson Park."

Public relations handout of the week, from the Manhattan office of Solters & Sabinson: "If Aristotle Onassis becomes President of Greece, as many observers expect, his Jacqueline will not be the first woman in history to become First Lady of two nations. Away back in the 12th century, Eleanor of Aquitaine had been Queen of France and later Queen of England. The current box office success, The Lion in Winter, starring Peter O'Toole as Henry II and Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor, makes clear references to these historical facts.

Which is not to detract from the reputation or charm of Jacqueline Onassis."

Time was when Frank Sinatra, 52, figured he owned Los Angeles. And he was proud of his possession. No more. "I've had it with Los Angeles and Hollywood," Frank announced. "The smog is so bad I had to visit my doctor once a week because my nose and throat are affected by it. I don't like the city government or the way things are run. The whole city needs cleaning up." So Frank is clearing out. "I haven't got too many years of singing left and I have to take care of myself." That will include stops at the spread in Palm Springs, the yacht, homes in London, Acapulco, Manhattan and, best of all, San Francisco. "Now there's a grownup, swinging town."

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