This volume contains a selection of early works by Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko who blazed a trail for a generation of Soviet poets with a confident poetic voice that moves effortlessly between social and personal themes. Zima Junction vividly describes his idyllic childhood in Siberia and his impressions of home after a long absence in Moscow. Private moments are captured in Waking , on the joys of discovering the unexpected in a lover, and Birthday , on a mother s concern for her son, while Encounter depicts an unexpected meeting with Hemingway in Copenhagen. The Companion and Party Card show war from a child s eye, whether playing while oblivious to German bombs falling nearby or discovering a fatally wounded soldier in the forest, while Yevtushenko s famous poem, Babiy Yar , is an angry expos of the Nazi massacre of the Jews of Kiev.