Collected Poems in English
by Joseph Brodsky
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This volume gathers the four major books published in English by the Soviet exile, Nobel Prize winner, and U.S. Poet Laureate along with a handful of previously uncollected poems and translations.Tags
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What is poetry? Joseph Brodsky, who died on this day in 1996, aged fifty-five, insisted that poetry's job was to explore the capacity of language to travel farther and faster. Poetry, he said, is accelerated thinking. When thinking of poetry it is worthwhile, and enjoyable, to consider and reflect on the poetry of those who, like Joseph Brodsky, have created superlative examples of verse and who have thought well and often about the subject.
I enjoy reading his poetry to experience his way of exploring "the capacity of language" to deal with ideas and move our hearts. Given the extreme circumstances of his life and the rewards he received for his poetic art this is an inspirational experience. In anticipation of his death he penned the show more poem Taps which opens with the following lines:
I've been reproached for everything save the weather
and in turn my own neck was seeking a scimitar.
But soon, I'm told, I'll lose my epaulets altogether
and dwindle into a little star.
Perhaps "a little star"; but he remains, for those of us who appreciate his poetry, a Supernova of twentieth century literature. show less
I enjoy reading his poetry to experience his way of exploring "the capacity of language" to deal with ideas and move our hearts. Given the extreme circumstances of his life and the rewards he received for his poetic art this is an inspirational experience. In anticipation of his death he penned the show more poem Taps which opens with the following lines:
I've been reproached for everything save the weather
and in turn my own neck was seeking a scimitar.
But soon, I'm told, I'll lose my epaulets altogether
and dwindle into a little star.
Perhaps "a little star"; but he remains, for those of us who appreciate his poetry, a Supernova of twentieth century literature. show less
One of my few true poetic ideals. Astounding, inimitable, hilarious, gutting.
Contains poems originally written in English and poems translated into English from the original Russian.
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216+ Works 3,918 Members
Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad on May 24, 1940. He left school at the age of fifteen, taking jobs in a morgue, a mill, a ship's boiler room, and a geological expedition. During this time he taught himself English and Polish and began writing poetry. His first poems appeared mainly in Syntax, a Leningrad underground literary magazine. In show more 1964, he was tried and sentenced to five years of administrative exile for the charge of parasitism. As a result of intervention by prominent Soviet cultural figures, he was freed in 1965. In 1972, under tremendous pressure from the authorities, he emigrated to the United States. He wrote nine volumes of poetry and several collections of essays. His works include A Part of Speech, To Urania, Watermark, On Grief and Reason, So Forth, and Collected Poems in English. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 and was named poet laureate of the United States, the first poet whose native language was not English to achieve this honor. He died of a heart attack on January 28, 1996. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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