Further remembrances of Andrei Voznesensky

Serge Schmemann remembers the Russian poet in the New York Times:

By the time I met the poet Andrei Voznesensky in the early 1980’s, he was in that limbo in authoritarian societies reserved for forces too powerful to destroy but too dangerous to let loose.

His poetry was quietly published. He traveled abroad. At his two-story wooden dacha among the tall pines of the renowned writer’s village of Peredelkino outside Moscow, he and his writer wife, Zoya Boguslavskaya, openly received foreigners. He struck me as anything but a rebel. He was more the country gentleman, whose appearance he cultivated with silk ascots and long scarves thrown casually over the shoulder . . .

Tim Rutten remembers the Voznesensky '60s in the Los Angeles Times:

Voznesensky had a particular fondness for California and found kindred spirits in the Beat writers, whose bohemian spirit enthralled him and whose readings set to jazz fascinated him. Ferlinghetti's San Francisco-based City Lights Press published an early collection, "Red Cats," that included Voznesensky's work. Voznesensky wrote a book-length poem, "Story Under Full Sail," about the doomed romance between the 18th century Russian explorer Nikolai Rezanov and the daughter of a Spanish official in Old California. He later used their story as the libretto for a hugely successful rock opera, "Juno and Avos," which remains in production three decades after its premiere . . .