The stars
In your flag,
America,
Are bullet holes...
Oh, Statue of Liberty, raise up
Your green, drowned woman's face
Against this death of freedom.
THIS IS one example of Yevtushenko's social realism that comes off. But nowhere, of course, do we read about life in Russia or for instance, about the invasion into Czechoslovakia. That is the price he pays for his freedom. The delivery of this, purposefully perhaps, was abrasive, softened somewhat by the chorus repeating selected lines. Then they burst into a Hair-like version of the poem. Heard were strains of rock, gospel and jazz--all thrown in for whatever measure the audience might think good. With a solid round of booing and scattered applause, intermission arrived.
Tomorrow, Richard Dey brings his experience as a writer for the U.S. Army to bear on the kind of poetry produced under the literary constraints of the Soviet Union