An Arrow in the Wall: Selected Poetry and Prose

In one of Voznesensky's new poems he laments Russian bookstores ""lined with stacks/ of monolithic published hacks.'' Parallels between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., ``two countries . . . guiltily tying nonlove's knot,'' emerge in another previously untranslated lyric. Striking images, searing wit and the courage to speak out mark the Russian poet's latest output, which also includes tender emotional verses to his mother and a poem about his visit to Picasso's house in the south of France shortly before the artist's death. Selections from his previous books, Antiworlds and Nostalgia for the Present, round out the poetry in this bilingual edition. There are two prose selections: ``I Am Fourteen,'' a telling portrait of his mentor Boris Pasternak, portrayed as an ``eternal adolescent,'' and ``O,'' a Fellini-like montage that rhapsodizes the sculpture of Henry Moore, one of Voznesensky's idols. (February 18)