Love Poems cannot be regarded as one of [Yevtushenko's] major publications: only half a dozen poems have not appeared in translation before…. But it is part of the same venture to divert attention from public works such as "Babiy Yar" towards the more personal, though never hermetic, love lyrics….

Recent poems suggest the development in Yevtushenko of a dutiful and at times tiresomely moralistic persona—"Where there is no love, how foul and disgusting / to copulate", "Oh bless the family, dear Lord, the crown of all mankind"—but it would be wrong to expect a complete, "Dover Beach"-like withdrawal from public concerns. (p. 846)

Blake Morrison, in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1978; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), July 28, 1978.