"The new young Mayakovsky of today," says Herbert Marshall of Yevgeny Yevtushenko. And there is indeed some parallel between the personalities and works of these two poets. If Mayakovsky was the poet of the Revolution, Yevtushenko occupies a similar position in the post-Stalin thaw. Something of Mayakovsky's personal dynamism and public appeal is present, though to a weaker degree, in Yevtushenko. In tone, language and form, Yevtushenko is at times very close to Mayakovsky. This is especially the case in his rhetorical poetry, declaimed "at the top of the voice" and addressed to the masses rather than to the "chosen few."…

Like Mayakovsky, Yevtushenko is primarily a "civic" poet (though not to the exclusion of personal, lyric poetry), involved in contemporary issues and committed to the ideology of the Communist regime. Yet the dissimilarities which become apparent at closer scrutiny—caused by different political and intellectual climates and...