A Depot of Metaphors

When The Shadow of Sound, a small volume of poetry, went on sale in Moscow a few weeks ago, the first shipment of 10,000 copies was sold out within two hours. That frenzied response was merely one more proof of the excitement that is generated by Andrei Voznesensky, who at 37 is among the best--and most talked about--of the Soviet Union's younger poets.

Since he first began to publish his poetry twelve years ago, Voznesensky has been sharply rebuked by Nikita Khrushchev and dismissed by conservative critics as a "formalist"--a derogatory term for a Soviet writer who allows himself to become preoccupied with experimentation rather than socialist realism. And he has frequently tussled with officialdom over censorship. His controversial stage revue, Look Out for Your Faces (TIME, March 9), an exuberant plea for individuality and self-expression, was ordered closed in February after only two performances. But his widespread popularity as the voice of a new Soviet generation has clearly survived undiminished. "His main quality is his being unfettered," writes Soviet Author Valentin Katayev in an introduction to the new volume. "The books of Voznesensky are always a depot of metaphors."

The Shadow of Sound is also a depot --or perhaps a birdcage--for a series of picture poems in which words are arranged in the shapes of their subjects. The poet, for instance, ends a sun-washed reverie ("I love to enter the aureole of light/where there are no boundaries") with the image: "The seagull is the bikini of God." Then he recasts these words to form a picture poem (see cut).

One of the volume's best poems, The Grove,* translated by R.A.D. Ford, Canadian Ambassador to Moscow and a poet in his own right, is an ode to the natural world in flight from man, who would destroy it:

Don't touch man, little tree, don't start a fire in him. So many things go on in him-- Oh God, save him from that!

Don't shoot man, little bird. The hunt has not opened yet. In your shade below is silence. So painful is the unknown.

An inexperienced two-legged friend. You, mink and sable, Strip the traps from the trail, so you don't harm your soul.

The past should not poach on him. He is not guilty of that. No need, free copse, no need, to be jealous of his homes.

You stand in such easy shade, reaching up to the eye-brows-- At least You don't kill with love.

Give back to him on Sunday all the berries and mushrooms. Grant him salvation, with salvation destroy him.

*Copyright 1970 by R.A.D. Ford.

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