Tuesday, April 04, 2017

Obituary Note: Yevgeny Yevtushenko

US Naval Institute Press: Last of the Annamese by Tom Glenn

Editors' Note

News

Raleigh's Brewery Bhavana: 'Flowers, Books, Beer & Dim Sum'

Brewery Bhavana, a restaurant in downtown Raleigh offering craft beer and dim sum, plus a flower shop and bookstore, opened last Wednesday, the News & Observer reported, noting that the bookshop and floral shop inside will initially operate according to restaurant's evening schedule, but "eventually will be open during the day to coincide with the brewery and restaurant's expanded hours."
The bookstore in front has a collection of 400 to 500 books on art, food, travel and literature. On the back wall is an expanding library of books from people in the community. Co-owner Vansana Nolintha estimated there are 2,000-3,000 books, and people who visit the space are encouraged to bring a book that's meaningful to them and include a note in the book to explain why.
"The owners see the space as a collaboration between its 'makers,' or the creative forces that are behind the restaurant coming to fruition, and as a connection with the community who has supported them for years," the News & Observer wrote.
"We have a phenomenal team. We have a lot of challenges to come. Our community is so eager and generous," said Vansana Nolintha, adding that Brewery Bhavana is "true to the heart."
DK Publishing: Out of the Box by Jemma Westing

B&N to Close Bethesda, Md., Store

Barnes & Noble will close its three-level, 37,500-square-foot location at the corner of Woodmont and Bethesda avenues in Bethesda, Md., when the lease expires at the end of the year. Bethesda Beat reported that the closure "represents the end of an era for the bookstore, which has anchored a key corner of the mixed-use retail center for two decades and has served as a popular community gathering space."
"We had discussions with the property owner in hopes of agreeing to an extension of the lease, but unfortunately, we were unable to come to an agreement," said David Deason, a Barnes & Noble v-p. "It has been our pleasure to have served this community and we hope to continue to serve our valued customers at the nearby Rockville Pike and Clarendon Market Common stores."

Obituary Note: Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Shelf Awareness
 
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the acclaimed Russian poet, writer and filmmaker "with the charisma of an actor and the instincts of a politician whose defiant verse inspired a generation of young Russians in their fight against Stalinism during the Cold War," died April 1, the New York Times reported. He was 83. Author of more than 150 books, Yevtushenko wrote poems of protest, "often declaimed with sweeping gestures to thousands of excited admirers in public squares, sports stadiums and lecture halls," and it was "as a tall, athletic young Siberian with a spirit both hauntingly poetic and fiercely political that he established his name in 20th-century literature."

Yevtushenko also drew criticism, however, for working within the Soviet system and "stopping short of the line between defiance and resistance," the Times wrote. He received state awards, his books were published and he was allowed to travel abroad. Exiled poet Joseph Brodsky once said of him: "He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved." But Yevtushenko's defenders pointed out "how much he did to oppose the Stalin legacy, an animus fueled by the knowledge that both of his grandfathers had perished in Stalin's purges of the 1930s."
"I never called myself a dissident. A rebel, yes," he said in an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) in 2009. "I was never interested in politics professionally, but I think that a writer cannot be indifferent to politics, because if he is indifferent to politics, he is indifferent to the people."

The Guardian noted that Yevtushenko "gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Joseph Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with 'Babi Yar,' an unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the antisemitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union."

Natalia Solzhenitsyn, widow of the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said on Russian state television that Yevtushenko "was a legend both in his very early years and in his mature years, he lived basing on his own principle: a poet in Russia is more than a poet. And he was truly more than a poet since he was a citizen with a clearly defined civil position. I think he will be long remembered as he was a lively person responding to injustice and receptive to major events."
"He's more like a rock star than some sort of bespectacled, quiet poet," Robert Donaldson, former president of the University of Tulsa (where Yevtushenko taught for many years), told the New York Times. 

In 1993, at a public celebration of his 60th birthday in Moscow, Yevtushenko read from his poem "Sixties Generation":
We were a fad for some, some we offended with our fame. But we set you free, you envious insulters. Let them hiss, that we are without talent, Sold out and hypocrites, It makes no difference. We are legendary, Spat upon, but immortal! 
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