{"id":109576,"date":"2017-04-05T16:06:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T20:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=109576"},"modified":"2017-04-05T22:43:41","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T02:43:41","slug":"an-empty-saddle-for-yevtushenko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/05\/an-empty-saddle-for-yevtushenko\/","title":{"rendered":"An Empty Saddle for Yevtushenko"},"content":{"rendered":"

The late Yevgeny Yevtushenko had an unlikely affinity for cowboy poetry.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Yevgeny Yevtushenko at the 1995 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Photo: Sue Rosoff.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last Saturday, April 1, outside Mandan, North Dakota, the fifty-year-old Shadd Piehl cooked dinner for his family: lasagna, garlic bread, a simple spinach salad. The wind chimes whispered on his porch, the breeze parting the prairie grass and bare elms beyond the barn. With the table set, Piehl called his wife, Marnie, and their three boys to the kitchen. He raised a toast: \u201cTo the great Russian poet and witness to our marriage, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.\u201d<\/p>\n

As unlikely as it seems, Yevtushenko\u2014the internationally renowned poet, the voice of so many young Soviets crawling out from Stalin\u2019s long shadow, the \u201cangry young man\u201d on the cover of Time <\/em>in April 1962\u2014cinches their memory of an era. Yevtushenko, who died of cancer Saturday, lived in Oklahoma, where he\u2019d been teaching poetry at the University of Tulsa since 1992. His eulogies trumpet his defense of the Jewish people; they quote from \u201cBabi Yar,\u201d his most recognized poem, composed after his first visit to the unmarked mass grave near Kiev, Ukraine; they boast of the thousands who once flocked to hear him read. But few have mentioned his impact in the world of cowboy poetry, a genre in which Yevtushenko\u2014unlike so many snickering journalists and dismissive academics\u2014appears to have found common ground with Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, I consider myself a Siberian cowboy! He actually said very disparaging things about academic poets in the United States, about how precious they were,\u201d said Hal Cannon, the founding director of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and its host organization, the Western Folklife Center. \u201cSo he related to it, and related to the passion of it, the spirit. So I think it was a great experience for him and I think it was also really validating for many cowboy poets.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Yevtushenko with the rodeo\u00a0poet Paul Zarzyski. Photo: Sue Rosoff.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1992, the same year he joined the faculty at the University of Tulsa, Yevtushenko gave a reading at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. He read first in his native tongue, and then stepped aside for the writer Kim Stafford (son of the acclaimed poet William Stafford) to recite the same work in English. Beforehand, Yevtushenko and Stafford\u2014an early volunteer with the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada\u2014had rehearsed in the college chapel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started doing the poem in English, and he stopped me immediately. He said, No! No! No! I\u2019m used to speaking to ten thousand people. It\u2019s got to be very, very big!\u201d Stafford said, adopting a thick Russian accent. \u201cHe really wanted me to punch it out there. So that got me thinking about Elko. You go to an academic poetry reading and the poetry may be fine literature, but the event is pretty tame. Pretty dry \u2026 and Yevtushenko\u2014he didn\u2019t fit that mold. It was like a bomb went off when he started reciting. This volcano of language was pouring out of his body. So my experience in Elko told me this guy is a gold mine. We\u2019ve got to get him to an audience that will really appreciate the performative element of his work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years later, thanks to Stafford and Scott Preston, a poet, publisher, and advocate for cowboy poetry, Yevtushenko stole the show at the eleventh annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, sharing the stage with cowboy and rodeo poets like Paul Zarzyski, Buck Ramsey, Linda Hussa, Vess Quinlan, and a young Shadd Piehl, then just twenty-eight. Today, those who connected with Yevtushenko in Elko cherish different memories, but they all emphasize his flamboyant getup: baggy harem pants tucked into the top of his cowboy boots, bright embroidered jacket, and a chunky silver-and-turquoise necklace.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked really manly and artistic, though. That could have looked kind of \u2026 off,\u201d Marnie says. \u201cBut it just worked for him. He just wore it like a boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d dress in these outlandish, ungodly, multicolored things, and he made no bones about it,\u201d added Andy Wilkinson, a poet, songwriter, and veteran performer in Elko. \u201cHaving been under the Gulag all that time wearing gray, he said, I\u2019m never going to wear anything dull again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And they all remember the way he performed: animated and loud, arms flailing, spit flying, his new anthology in hand, leaving the stage behind. The one and only Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott, walking with a group of performers to a restaurant downtown, would later mimic Yevtushenko\u2019s delivery, his accent spot on, according to Bette Ramsey, and his limbs going wild.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalk about a flashback to Catholicism,\u201d Zarzyski said. \u201cYevtushenko in his Cossack vestments moving up and down the aisle reciting poetry\u2014and the women just swooning.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Preston first introduced Piehl and Marnie to Yevtushenko, the self-proclaimed Siberian cowboy insisted he could read their fortune. Lifting The Collected Poems: 1952\u20131990<\/em><\/a>, Yevtushenko asked Piehl to pick a page number and a line at random. \u201cPage seventy-two,\u201d Piehl said. \u201cLine five.\u201d Yevtushenko split the book and read, \u201cWe set off side by side, our path the same.\u201d When Preston mentioned the young couple\u2019s courthouse marriage coming up the next day, \u201che really kicked into overdrive,\u201d Piehl said. He grabbed them both, smiling wide, eyes big and blue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love weddings! I\u2019ve been married four times!\u201d He added: \u201cI\u2019d love to be there with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t really a thing you refuse,\u201d Marnie said.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Courtesy Shadd and Marnie Piehl.<\/p><\/div>\n

The next day, just before five in the evening, Yevtushenko\u2014alongside Zarzyski, Preston, and the poet Trish O\u2019Malley\u2014stepped through the doors of the Elko County Courthouse, as promised. After he recited a short Russian proverb, and Zarzyski recited \u201cThe Bucking Horse Moon<\/a>,\u201d a poem of his own, Piehl and Marnie eloped. As the official witnesses, Yevtushenko and Zarzyski signed the marriage certificate. While the group waited in the hallway for Piehl to pay the fees, Yevtushenko turned to Marnie and asked bluntly, \u201cMay I bless your womb?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he put his hands right on my abdomen\u2014it wasn\u2019t inappropriate, I gave him permission and it was kind of wonderful\u2014and he said, I have five sons, and I wish sons upon you. And I said, Well terrific, thank you. And you know, we have three sons, which I love.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Courtesy Shadd and Marnie Piehl.<\/p><\/div>\n

For a select group at the \u201995 Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Yevtushenko\u2019s death sparks nostalgia for what they suspect may be the best late-night jam session the Gathering has ever known. Spontaneous hoedowns are par for the course in Elko, as much a part of cowboy poetry as the poetry itself. What begins as a small conversation at the hotel bar soon becomes a packed lobby or\u2014more intimate yet\u2014a hotel room chock-full of musicians and poets ready for a little more drink and a little more melody. In 1995, the after-hours caucus convened in the hotel room of the late Buck Ramsey, sometimes referred to as the \u201cspiritual leader of the cowboy poetry movement,\u201d and his wife, Bette. In groups of two or three, the performers trickled in. Andy Wilkinson; Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott; Canadian singer-songwriter Ian Tyson; musician and \u201cOfficial Cowboy Poet of Texas\u201d Red Steagall. Westerners all\u2014except for Yevtushenko. It didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes sense that a person would come from another culture and do their poems, because everybody at Elko thinks they\u2019re from another culture. You\u2019re from the cow culture. You\u2019re from the sheep culture. You\u2019re from whatever,\u201d Wilkinson said. \u201cSo I think they have a warm spot for people who have paid for it, like Yevtushenko.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, not every cowboy poet loved Yevtushenko, Cannon says. The communist jokes were sure to come, ignorant as they were. \u201cThere are some people who, whenever anything is experimented with, they\u2019re resentful of it. They want just straight down the line sure enough American cowboys.\u201d<\/p>\n

But many will never forget Yevtushenko or his brush with the underdog of American poetry. After the Gathering, despite a week of long days and longer nights, Zarzyski immediately picked up the pen and went to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get back from Elko and you\u2019re exhausted. You\u2019re running on the two brain cells the whiskey failed to pickle. And so it\u2019s usually a week of what I call reentry to the real world. But I hit the ground running and wrote that poem the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

He titled it \u201cYevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko\u2014Cowboy Poet<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Its final lines go like this:<\/p>\n

Bring it on home,
\nYevtushenko\u2014bring us back to the mother world
\nwhere your poetry throws open the gates
\nrolls and buries the barbed wire, bulldozes
\nthe hormonal walls into rubble,
\nand hoists the white flag that allows us all,
\nunconditionally, to swoon for you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carson Vaughan<\/a> is a freelance writer from Nebraska whose work has appeared in <\/em>The New Yorker,<\/em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0New York Times,<\/em> Slate,<\/em> Smithsonian,<\/em> and<\/em> Travel + Leisure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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