A Visit with a Russian Poet

It was early November in 1966. The fall weather had so far been fairly mild, and the snowfall had been light. My first book of poems, Winter News, had been published earlier in the year, and had received a number of favorable reviews in various periodicals, and very welcome attention from the Academy of American Poets in New York. Funds from my Guggenheim fellowship, awarded the previous year, had made the homestead life a good deal easier, and Jo and I were more relaxed in our daily routine, with a decent supply of store-bought groceries as well as produce from the home garden and greenhouse. We were more in touch with the outside world, but still were without a phone and electric power. Mail arrived from Fairbanks daily, and we had a small battery-powered radio that allowed us to get something of the national and statewide news.

One afternoon, with the sun setting behind the Alaska Range to the south and the light beginning to fade, I looked down from the front of the house toward the river and the highway below the homestead, and I saw something unusual: a car parked in the small clearing at the foot of the trail I had cleared some years ago to enable us to reach the highway and the mailbox that was posted some distance up the road toward Fairbanks. And then I saw a small group of people beginning to climb the path uphill toward the house. I was surprised, and I said to Jo: "It looks as if we have some visitors." And soon enough the group had reached the top of the ground near the house, and had begun to walk around toward the front door.

I went to the door to let them in or inquire who they might be looking for. When I opened the door, an older man standing in front of the rest of the group introduced himself: "Hello, I'm Professor (blank) from Queens College in New York, and I've brought a Russian poet to meet you!"

My immediate thought was that someone was playing a joke, and I stood at the door, wondering what was going on. And then, immediately behind the professor, I saw this younger man whose face I recognized from a photograph in a recent issue of one of the newspapers or magazines we had received. He was, in fact, the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who was on a reading tour in the United States.

I then invited the entire group into our one-room cabin. With the poet and his academic guide, who was also his translator, since Yevtushenko did not speak English, were a reporter and photographer from Life and another reporter/photographer from Look, two prominent weekly magazines. We quickly filled the small space in the cabin; and, with some shifting of chairs, and clearing the sofa that was also our bed, I made it possible for us all to sit and become acquainted with one another. Yevtushenko had brought with him from the car a bottle of vodka and a smaller bottle of lime juice. I brought out glasses, and we were all soon sipping what I supposed was the customary Russian drink.

I soon learned from the scholar/translator that they were on a tour of Alaska, and that Fairbanks was but one of their places to visit. They had heard of me through the academy in New York, of my writing and my remote location on the highway south of Fairbanks, and had been encouraged to make the visit. No one in the group, not even the professor from Queens, knew of my work or had seen my one published book of poems; but, after having spent some brief time in Fairbanks, they decided to take part of a day and try to locate this poet who apparently chose to live in the isolation of an interior Alaska wilderness.

So there we were, a small group in that confined space, with the woodstove kindled and warming the kettle, and the lamps lighted when the evening grew slowly darker. I...