In the poetry written in Russia since Stalin's death, Vinokurov's transparent simplicity and Voznesensky's near incantations define one set of extremes. When Vinokurov fails, his poetry loses a dimension, becoming flat, and too often Voznesensky produces fireworks that dazzle but leave no lasting impression. Only Joseph Brodsky, it would seem, has a reach great enough to span both extremes and a grip strong enough to hold onto both at once, as he does in his "Elegy for John Donne."

This collection consists of seventy-two poems written between 1961 and 1969. Four of Brodsky's translations of Donne are included, as well as a poem on the death of T. S. Eliot, written in imitation of Auden's poem on the death of Yeats. Brodsky's fascination with English poetry makes him especially interesting to us and probably somewhat unique among young Soviet poets. Brodsky can be slangy and toughly sentimental when he draws portraits of his school chums and is at home both with the poema and the lyric (One, "Verses in April," begins "Again this winter / I did not lose my mind."). Though his versatility and dexterity are extraordinary, what is most remarkable in Brodsky is a quality of consciousness which can only be termed religious. It can also be found in the works of Solzhenitsyn and Sinyavsky but, being so individual a matter, should not give rise to undue speculation on a resurgence of spirituality in Russia. (p. 202)