[Might] not a volume with the title The Face Behind the Face contain some clues about the "real" man behind the public image?

On the surface, it doesn't. All the poems in this [collection of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's works] … are immensely readable. Most of them are engaging, and vital in their own way. Yet neither the Whitmanesque avocations of [Yevtushenko's] Introduction ("You have to look into the mirror and be able to see … a multiplicity of other faces, without which there is no you.") nor the argument of the title poem carry a lot of conviction…. The real interest here lies in the corners illuminated by shafts of self-doubt; and in the poet's zeal to prove that poets and poetry still retain some status, in his world and ours…. And it is possible to see many of the poems in this new book as the extrovert side of a...