A Part of Speech
by Joseph Brodsky
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A Part of Speech contains poems from the years 1965-1978, translated by various hands.Tags
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A loyal subject of these second-rate years,
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse: the dark inside, or the darkness out.
I sent the above to host of people the other day, a warmish winter day, wet and windy when I felt so present and engaged if only to the fleeting.
Brodsky spoke to me.
He is the nexus of numerous cross currents, a pulsing collapse of the heartfelt onto the soberly observational. Etymologically, Gospel means good news and I'm not sure I could welcome such by either label these days.
And in my throat, where a boring tale
or tea, or laughter should be the norm,
snow show more grows all the louder and "Farewell!"
darkens like Scott wrapped in a polar storm.
This is what I need now. show less
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse: the dark inside, or the darkness out.
I sent the above to host of people the other day, a warmish winter day, wet and windy when I felt so present and engaged if only to the fleeting.
Brodsky spoke to me.
He is the nexus of numerous cross currents, a pulsing collapse of the heartfelt onto the soberly observational. Etymologically, Gospel means good news and I'm not sure I could welcome such by either label these days.
And in my throat, where a boring tale
or tea, or laughter should be the norm,
snow show more grows all the louder and "Farewell!"
darkens like Scott wrapped in a polar storm.
This is what I need now. show less
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Author Information
216+ Works 3,916 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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Belongs to Publisher Series
Classifications
- Genres
- Poetry, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 891.71 — Literature & rhetoric Asian Literature East Indo-European and Celtic literatures Russian and East Slavic languages Russian poetry
- LCC
- PG3479.4 .R64 .C4513 — Language and Literature Slavic languages and literatures. Baltic languages. Albanian language Slavic. Baltic. Albanian Russian literature Individual authors and works 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 240
- Popularity
- 135,110
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.90)
- Languages
- English, Russian
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 3
