Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)
"There are no depths. Appearance is the summary of phenomena." -Joseph Brodsky [1]
Joseph Brodsky was born May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. His father was a photographer and his mother was an interpreter. Brodsky said he grew up surrounded by anti-semitism. [2] He worked a variety of jobs in varied industries including in a milling machine factory, in a morgue at a prison, in hospitals, and on geological expeditions. [3] He first became interested in poetry at 19 when he picked up a book of poems by Evgeny Abromovich Baratynsky. [4]
A newspaper in Leningrad labeled Brodsky's poetry "pornographic and anti-Soviet" in 1963. He was put in a mental institution and finally arrested for "parasitism" and put on trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years hard labor, however his sentence was shortened to eighteen months. [5]
He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in Ann Arbor Michigan with the help of W. H. Auden. [6] He became a US citizen in 1977 and US poet laureate in 1991. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1987. [7]
Brodsky was reported in the New York Times to have been ill for many years before his death at 55 on January 28, 1996 from a heart attack. [8]
==========================
Text of poems read
Odysseus to Telemachus
www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...
I threw my arms about those shoulders
oldpoetry.com/opoem/24508-Jose...
A Song
www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pd...
Letter to an Archaeologist
www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pd...
I Sit by the Window
famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/...
==========================
Sources and Notes
[1] Nick Watson interview with Joseph Brodsky in The Argonist magazine 1996
www.argotistonline.co.uk/Brods...
[2] Wikipedia: Joseph Brodsky from New York Times, January 29, 1996
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_B...
[3] [4] Wikipedia: Joseph Brodsky
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_B...
[5] [6] [7] [8] York Times, January 29, 1996 Joseph Brodsky Exiled Poet Who Won Nobel, Dies at 55
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage...
10 дек 2010
