Flowers and Bullets

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Shortly after four students were killed by National Guard bullets on the Kent State University campus on May 4, 1970, Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote a poem dedicated to Allison Krause, one of the slain students. Its theme was based on the report that the day before her death, Ms Krause had put a flower on a National Guardsman's rifle, saying that "flowers are better than bullets." The poem, "Flowers & Bullets," was printed in Pravda, the Communist party newspaper.

In December 1970, Yevtushenko donated the manuscript of the poem -- reproduced here -- to the Libraries' Department of Special Collections & Archives.

View the manuscript

A translation of the poem by Anthony Kahn was published by City Lights Books in 1970. That translation is as follows:

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