I met Yevgeny Yevtushenko in the spring in 1993. A local poet (this was in Saint Petersburg, Florida) with a Hemingway beard called Guy (whose last name escapes me) had some how managed to bring him to the University of South Florida for a reading.

Yevtushenko legendarily used to fill football (read:soccer) stadiums in the former Soviet Union for his readings of poems that spread across the nation, passed around in samizdats (according to the Cape Cod Times, he brought in 42,000 at a reading in Russia last week – but I have also read that the days of Russian poets as rock stars may be at or, at least, nearing an end).

His poem, Babi Yar, is also the text for the vocals of Dmitry Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony.

I got to read some of my poems to the crowd (which was embarrassingly small – perhaps 50 people – for an appearance by a such a renowned figure of world literature). I won’t say that I was very well received – but, give me a break – I was eighteen. Unless your last name is Keats, chances are, you weren’t writing much poetry that was any good before you were twenty-five and your best stuff probably didn’t come until you were at least thirty-five.

Despite my personal failings, Yevtushenko himself was unfailingly polite and enthusiastic, reading and speaking with great gusto. I think he was even hitting on another poet of my acquaintance, named April (again – I can’t remember her last name).

A little older now, I understand that Yevtushenko’s name is not universally beloved and that maybe he was not always the rebel he made himself out to be in the eyes of the state. But I also understand that I once stood next to one of the last poet-rock stars.