Product Description
In this brief, intense, gem-like book, equal parts extended autobiographical essay and prose poem, Brodsky turns his eye to the seductive and enigmatic city of Venice. A mosaic of 48 short chapters—each recalling a specific episode from one of his many visits there (Brodsky spent his winters in Venice for nearly 20 years)—Watermark associatively and brilliantly evokes one city's architectural and atmospheric character. In doing so, the book also reveals a subject—and an author—readers have never before seen.
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Customer Reviews (5)

A treat
Brodsky is coyly, conciously self-indulgent here, by publishing thoughts about his favorite little city ... maybe everyone's favorite little city. Some of these essays are like shrugs: "this is how i feel, this is what it may mean. who knows?" Some are far more ardent, on the verge of revelation. Brodsky's humor, and casual seriousness, make this tiny book a real pleasure to hang out with.

Ode to a floating, perhaps transient city
WATERMARK is an apt title for this splendid collection of thoughts and fugues on the city of Venice, a place where Brodsky returned yearly for seventeen years and where in the solitude of the winter months in this most desirable of tourist destinations he composed some of his best poetry and translations.Brodsky's title refers to the repeated traces (watermarks) the sea makes on the canals and decaying buildings of Venice, like pages from a book of history or of poetry, or a novel.He writes extended soliloquies about the surfaces of the water in the canals and in the surrrounding sea that softly and surely continues to submerge Venice.He also writes colloquies of conversations with Ezra Pound's widow and the subsequent memories and opinions of that controversial figure.His rambling discourses while strolling the narrow streets that follow the canals inevitably to the sea are rich in observation and philosophy. His love for Venice is always palpable.'...the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzi, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky.The music is, of course, greater than the band, and no hand can turn the page.'

Joseph Brodsky is at his finest in much of this small volume.For those who love Venice by association or by dreams of history and the music of Vivaldi, Bellini, and the art of Tiepolo or Titian, this collection of reveries is a must. Elegant, charming, stimulating, and nostalgic.

Lover of Exile Literature
A remarkable synthesis of poetry and prose.His style reveals impressions rather than what he has seen.The best comparison that I can think of is a dream that you remember vividly.

shimmering
For any reader who wants to recreate the mesmerizing effect of walking thewatery streets of Venice, reading this book will do it. As you enterBrodsky's very personal meditation on the ancient city that has enchantedso many for so long, his thoughts become your own, and all at once you arethere. Dipping into the pages of this book is an armchair traveler'sparadise.

A must for lovers of Venice
Brodsky writes of his memories of seventeen winters in Venice.He has captured the shimmering essence of the Serene Republic in a series of short essays.His focus, as that of the city, is on the water and its reflective capacity.The water and city mirror an inner process for Brodsky and many others who visit.He explores the theme of light upon water from many perspectives, ultimately acknowledging the mystery of both the city, the water and the attachment formed.These memories, fragmented as light on water, will bring any traveler back to the beauty and wonder of Venezia ... Read more

Product Description
The poems of the legendary Nobel Laureate, in one volume at last

One of the greatest and grandest advocates of the literary vocation, Joseph Brodsky truly lived his life as a poet, and for it earned eighteen months in an Arctic labor camp, expulsion from his native country, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Such were one man's wages. Here, collected for the first time, are all the poems he published in English, from his earliest collaborations with Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur, Howard Moss, and Anthony Hecht to the moving farewell poems he wrote near the end of his life. With nearly two hundred poems, several of them never before published in book form, this will be the essential volume of Brodsky's work.
Amazon.com Review
In his brilliant, mercurial prose, the late Joseph Brodsky insistedtirelessly on the superiority of poetry. It's ironic, then, that his ownpoems--at least in their English incarnations--tend to trail his own essaysby a country mile. Ordinarily you might pin the blame on the usualsuspects: the translators. But Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur, Howard Moss,and Anthony Hecht are hardly hacks for hire, and neither were the otherhardy souls who helped Brodsky to ease his Russian verse over thelinguistic hurdles. No, the problem has more to do with the poet's stubbornattachment to formalism. Determined to echo his native rhyme schemes andrapid-fire cadences--and to accommodate his marvelous, maddeningproliferation of metaphors--Brodsky wrenched his English poetry into onepeculiar shape after another. Even when he's half-apologizing (in "A Songto No Music") for his verbal curlicues, he manages to leave most readersscratching their heads: "Scholastics? Almost. Just as well. / God knows.Take any for a spastic / consent. For after all, pray tell, / what in thisworld is not scholastic?"

All this would be irrelevant if Brodsky were not in fact a writer ofdizzying talents. The worst poems here still bear the faint impress ofimpacted genius, and bring to mind Randall Jarrell's famous line about WaltWhitman--that "only a man with the most extraordinary feel for language, ornone whatsoever, could have cooked up [his] worst messes." And when Brodskymanages to tame his Russian accent and his addiction to Euclidean props,he's capable of enormous power. His "Elegy: For Robert Lowell" is a perfect(and very Lowell-like) example: "In the autumnal blue / of yourchurch-hooded New / England, the porcupine / sharpens its golden needles /against Bostonian bricks / to a point of needless / blinding shine." He'salso a superb observer of the natural landscape, which forces hishigh-velocity imagination to proceed in leisurely, lyrical increments.Hence the opening of "In England":

And so you are returning, livid flesh of early dusk. The chalk
Sussex rocks fling seaward the smell of dry grass and
a long shadow, like some black useless thing. The rippling
sea hurls landward the roar of the incoming surge and
scraps of ultramarine. From the coupling of the splash of
needless water and needless dark arise, sharply
etched against the sky, spires of churches...

Customer Reviews (6)

Brodsky: a master in a tradition of masters
I had immersed myself in the Russian poets who were Brodsky's precursors (Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Blok), then started reading him, since Akhmatova referred to him at the end of her life. (Brodsky's attendance at Akhmatova's funeral was one of the reasons the Soviet authorities went after him.) At the beginning I found Brodsky's complexity, and the oddness of his figures of speech, disappointing. But I kept coming back to him. Some of it still seems odd, stilted, but I suspect that some of this is due to translation difficulties. And some of the oddness disappears as I read more and learn his utterly original mode of thinking.
His poems are really growing on me. I would have said a month ago that my favorite is "The Butterfly"; but I find myself coming back again and again to "Lullaby of Cape Cod" and "Nunc Dimittis". "The New Jules Verne" is one of the funniest poems I've ever read. "Fin de Siecle"--about growing old (or, more accurately, unhealthy)--has just about the most meaningful ending, for me, of anything I've ever read.
I read "Lullaby of Cape Cod" twice today. I can't get its images out of my head: the loss of his home in Russia, what a hot Massachusetts summer night is like, all that can be learned from time and night, the fantasy of Atlantic codfish coming to the door--this is a poem about Cape COD, after all! The man does have a sense of humor-- with which he finally manages to lull himself to sleep.
This is the best book of his poetry. The translations are fairly consistent in tone, especially since he usually either translated them himself or advised those who did. If you buy it, be patient with it. Brodsky rewards patience.

brodsky.collected poems in english
brodsky is a great and unfortunately, almost unknown author. this is my second book on him and i deeply recommend it.

A great collection
This collection brings together Brodsky's work in English, much of which he has been intimately involved in translating. This becomes important in that, for those of us who do not speak Russian, these poems can be considered direct from Brodsky's hand, as opposed to coming through the often suspect medium of independent translator. (This seems to have been discussed in many of these reviews and is well examined in the Forward to this book.) Moreover, Brodsky's attention to meter and rhyme schemes are unerringly original and his ability with the English language is astonishing, surprising, taking the world apart in language and puts it back together in image.

The edition is very appealing. Thick but easy to read.

On Brodsky
This is a large and lovely book.It collects the most significant and important verse of J. Brodsky, winner of the Nobel prize.I highly recommend it.

Brodsky speaks of history's fortune and fate as he attempts a clarification of the poet's role in a world gone amuck.There are some gems here: "On Love," "I Sit By the Window," "Odysseus to Telemachus," "The Butterfly," "Torso," "Elegy: For Robert Lowell," and "Cafe Trieste: SF," to name a few.

Brodsky's poetic voice is imaginative and celestial.His words are as light and time-transcendent as the cloud-walk of heavenly angels.

I also recommend: Z. Herbert, C. Milosz, R. Hass, W. Szymborska, A. Zagajewski, and R. Jeffers.

don't believe the hype
Don't believe the petty, narrow-minded balderdash about supposed poor translations. Duh, he wrote in another language that most English speakers don't know and aren't about to learn, and it has to be translated so we can read it in English. Wow. The author, who is one of the greatest poets of the century, either translated it himself or had help from other giants of poetry, so it's how he wanted it - and it's brilliant. So it isn't exactly how it was in Russian...Ok, but it's still better than most of the poetry published in the last 50 years. Don't listen to the whining nit-pickers, and enjoy this wonderful collection. If it was up to them [those who are against translation in general] and their grotesque elitism, we wouldn't have anything translated into or out of English, or into or out of any other language, and that would be a disaster. Plus translations aren't anyway near as problematic as they think, but there's no space to go into that here. ... Read more

Product Description
A Part of Speech contains poems from the years 1965-1978, translated by various hands.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Paradise, Plus Brodsky's Books
There are approximately 150 pages of poems written by Russian born winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Joseph Brodsky.I have bought a Russian edition A Part of Speech many years ago and I was especially interested in English to read and compare.I am not keen on reading poetry every day but every time it happens something beautiful remains in the soul and helps working anywhere, ... mathematics, for example.
The Russian edition A Part of Speech (a small cycle inside the book with the same title) I have read was printed in 2004, I guess without compiling by will of the author. So, it's a question: is there a difference? Frankly,be ready for a little surprise.There are fifteen poems in English text (184 line,1977) and twenty poems in Russian (244 lines). I believe that Russian publishers had their reasons to add five poems, but I believe to my heart too wishing to know what the poet had been created in 1977.And I said myself: `You lucky guy today, you will know what HE felt when HE wrote exactly'.
Maybe fifteen minutes I thought it is a bit uncomfortable to read a Russian poet in English when you have opportunity to read in both languages.Now, I think I feel myself very well learning original composition of lines, feelings, and heart's vibrations of author.
In Russian St. Petersburg (city the poet was born) middle aged men have a joke: `If you are 40 years old, you got up in the morning and you don't feel any pain, any hurt -- you are in the Paradise yet'.Many years I live in `the Paradise'.Plus Brodsky's books.

The book every "Russian-soul" person should have!
A genius poems by Nobel Prize winner Russian poet J. Brodsky will lead you through the magic of words, ideas, and wolrd experience. Brodsky united in his poetry the brightest thoughts and deepest emotions of The RussianPersonality. This is a strongly recomended book for everyone who is tryingto understand the mystery of "Russian soul". ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of essays thrusts Brodsky--heretofore known more for his poetry and translations--into the forefront of the "Third Wave" of Russian emigre writers. His insights into the works of Dostoyevsky, Mandelstam, Platonov, as well as non-Russian poets Auden, Cavafy and Montale are brilliant. While the Western popularity of many other Third Wavers has been stunted by their inability to write in English, Brodsky consumed the language to attain a "closer proximity" to poets such as Auden. The book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, opens and closes with revealing autobiographical essay.
Amazon.com Review
This collection of essays thrusts Brodsky--heretofore known more forhis poetry and translations--into the forefront of the "Third Wave"of Russian emigre writers. His insights into the works of Dostoyevsky, Mandelstam, Platonov, as well asnon-Russian poets Auden, Cavafy and Montale arebrilliant. While the Western popularity of many other Third Wavers has beenstunted by their inability to write in English, Brodsky consumed the languageto attain a "closer proximity" to poets such as Auden. The book,which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, opens and closes withrevealing autobiographical essays. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

The prose of a poet has poetry in it
This collection of essays is by one of the great Russian poets of this century. In it he writes of his life and poetry, and of those poets who have meant much to him. His memoir of his separation from his parents, their twelve - year effort to reunite while being refused by the Soviet Authorities is a tale of sadness, and pain.
I have just read the essay on Nadezhda Mandelstamm and through it received an insight into her life and literature. At the age of sixty- five never really having written at length before she wrote the two great memoirs of her husband's life that Brodsky considers the true cultural history of Russia in this century.
He writes of the poems of her husband and life together which she remembered.," And gradually those things grew on her. If there is any substitute for love , it'smemory. To memorize , then, is to restore intimacy.Gradually the lines of those poets became her mentality, became her identity. They supplied her not only with the plane of regard or angle of vision; more importantly, they became her linguistic norm.So when she out to write her books, she was bound to gauge-by that time already unwittingly, instinctively- her sentences against theirs. The clarity and remorselessness of her pages, while reflecting the character of her mind, are also inevitable stylistic consequences of the poetry that had shaped that mind.In both their content and style , her books are but a postcript to the supreme version of language which poetry essentiallyis and which became her flesh through learning her husband's lines by heart."

One of the most striking parts of this essay is Brodsky's description of the great Akhmatova's devotion to Nadezhda Mandelshtamm. Through poverty, destitution, persecution two great friends, one one of the greatest Russian poets of the century , the other the widow of another of the greatest of Russian poets stood by each other.
The humane voice of a great poet is in these essays. And they inspire and remind of the Literature that is not merely words, but rather the 'truth of life.'

HONEST LANGUAGE MEANS FREEDOM
I translated this book into Hebrew and it was published by sifriat poalim.
For a reader of the old testament in the original freedom and language are one and the same.
Giora Leshem

Erudite, unsentimental and moving
Primarily known as a poet this volume shows that Joseph Brodsky was also a splendid essayist and his interests varied and his attention to detail deep and probing. Dealing with the trauma of exile his remembrance of things past is like the educational adventure of a long furlough from love and his country submerged in totalitarianism with his mentors either imprisoned, declawed or dead is still the theme upon which he is emotionally impaled.
He seems disgusted by America and in love with his disgust, the social utility of hypocrisy, the halo polishing in the upper echelons and the fawning sycophants chirruping inanely are recognizable figures onboth sides of the cold war.
His paeans to poets as diverse as Mandelbaum and W.H AUDEN are astounding in their compassion , knowledge and unlike other critics never infected by logorrhea.
He can't cure what is lost in translation but he makes us aware that a poem is a form of aggression in its purest and most humane form. Brooding, dark and often pessimistic Brodsky is still an illuminating writer because he chooses to create rather than mourn and seems to say that sorrow observed is compensatory idealism but when your love cannot create you are in love with death. And he saw too much to sentimentalize sacrifice and the grim reaper.

Less Than One: Selected Essays
When Joseph Brodsky emigrated to the United States in 1972 as an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union, he probably believed that he'd see his parents again, that political circumstances would inevitably change. Moreover, it is only natural to believe that a forced "political" separation from one's parents could not last for long. His parents spent their final years hoping against hope that they'd see their beloved son one more time-a death wish before dying. But that faithful dream never materialized. "I know," writes Brodsky, "that one shouldn't equate the state with language but it was in Russian that two old people, shuffling through numerous state chancelleries and ministries in the hope of obtaining a permit to go abroad for a visit to see their only son before they died, were told repeatedly, for twelve years in a row, that the state considers such a visit `unpurposeful'..." Letters were mostly forbidden, but Brodsky was allowed to call his parents every week. Phone calls were monitored. Brodsky tells us that they learned how to speak "euphemistically."

"In a Room and a Half" is Brodsky's last attempt to join his parents. Brodsky's father was a professional photographer and journalist. Something of the art of photography must have been passed on to his son. This beautiful narrative was as close as Brodsky could come to presenting a family album of photographic "takes" or "frames" which emerge in the poet's memory from his childhood days. There are forty-five photos that make up "In a Room and a Half."

You cannot possibly stand outside of this memoir as a "detached witness" once you begin to read it. It is as if you were sitting late into the night with Brodsky-the last log is burning out and he begins to tell you about something that is, under ordinary circumstances, a private and solitary affair of the heart. In this sense, we feel privileged, and we want him to go on-to keep turning the pages of his lost youth, to share whatever sacred memories he has left to share about his life with his parents. It is indeed an act of defiance that is anything but sentimental. And yet, who can read this eulogy without feeling their heart drop to the floor?

We listen, and, through Brodsky's genius, enter into these forty-five narrative photographs. We can see and touch the China that his mother saved for his wedding. We hear the sounds of a faucet, the odors from the kitchen. We see the quiet, grey light of this tiny space where father, mother and son lived out their daily activities. We walk around the room with Brodsky as he tells us about the story of his parents' cherished bed. We see a feeble table with a white, luminous tablecloth under the care of his mother's hands. We see the deep blue of his father's uniform and we reach out to touch those bright yellow buttons that remind the boy of an illuminated avenue. It is all so vividly real.

Joseph Brodsky is dead now-and there is nothing that can ever separate this family again.

Highly recommended insight into Soviet life
Brodsky's words flow with the gentle ease of a boat ride on a sunny sunday afternoon, until you find yourself floundering at the bottom of a crashing waterfall. Repeated re-readings of the 'waterfall' line do little to lessenthe impact. Brodsky holds nothing back, as he brings his mighty pen to bearagainst the soviet government that exiled him, and would not allow eitherof his parents to visit him in the remaining 12 years of their lives. ... Read more

Product Description
Joseph Brodsky, one of the most prominent contemporary American poets, is also among the finest living poets in the Russian language. Nevertheless, his poetry and the crucial bilingual dimension of his poetic world are still insufficiently understood by Western audiences. How did the Russian-born Brodsky arrive at his present status as an international man of letters and American poet laureate? Has he been created by his bilingual experience, or has he fashioned the bilingual self as a necessary precondition for writing poetry in the first place? Here David Bethea suggests that the key to Brodsky, perhaps the last of the great Russian poets in the "bardic" mode, is in his relation to others, or the Other.Brodsky's master trope turns out to be "triangular vision," the tendency to mediate a prior model (Dante) with a closer model (Mandelstam) in the creation of a palimpsest-like text in which the poet is implicated as a triangulated hybrid of these earlier incarnations. In pursuing this theme, Bethea compares and contrasts Brodsky to the poet's favorite models--Donne, Auden, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva--and analyzes his fundamental differences with Nabokov, the only Russian exile of Brodsky's stature to rival him as a bilingual phenomenon. Various critical paradigms are used throughout the study as foils to Brodsky's thinking. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (5)

Opening the past and the mind of Joseph Brodsky
JOSEPH BRODSKY, LENINGRAD: FRAGMENTS succeeds on every level.For those not familiar with Brodsky's brilliant poetry I would recommend that you spend time with WATERMARKS, his tribute to the city of Venice, before coming to this book.Once the gentle subtleties of his poetry are in mind, then spending time perusing this pictorial essay of Brodsky's face and the scenes of Leningrad (the old name for St. Petersburg is used because that was the city's Soviet name used when Brodsky lived there) will form a complete picture of this amazing expatriate.Mikhail Lemkhin addresses not only the pictorial influences on the poet, but also adds some words of wisdom.The tribute at the end of the photographs, in some of Sunsan Sonntag's most eloquent writing, isa fitting closure to this very lovely book.Highly recommended.

Through His Glasses, Face to Face
If an appreciation of the personal perspective of the poet can deepen the experience of his words, then Lemkhin's photographic tribute to Brodsky's beloved home belongs on our bookshelves alongside the poetry books andessays of the Nobel laureate. Except for an intimate foreword by Milosz, amoving afterword by Sontag, and brief postnotes in which Lemkhin providesbackground details on several of the images, the message of this book isdelivered entirely through black-and-white images. The voice of thosevisions comes through most clearly when one imagines viewig through theeyes of the poet himself, not only in the streets and the statues, theskies and the stories of Leningrad, but in the mirror of the close-upsnapshots of Brodsky himself placed throughout the collection of pictures.Even the mediocre artistic quality of some of the individual snapshots canbe forgiven as the soft footsteps of the poet can be heard stepping throughhis own lines in the movement of these deeply personal worlds of his ownhome.

Photographic masterpieces
I greatly enjoyed the two books by Mikhail Lemkhin: "Missing Frames" and "Fragments". I am especially moved by portraits. There is something about the portraits that make them very different frommost others. The pictures are not posed, but don't seem to be too candideither.I get the impression that the subject is aware of thephotographer, but is not posing for him, at least not physically. It is asif the subject is exposing his/her inner soul to the camera. Thephotographs work, in deeply satisfying way, very well. I know I will lookat them again and again.

remarkable book
Mikhail Lemkhin's book is a book in the fullest sense: not an album of exquisite photo studies, but a composition which transcribes a train of thought.The pages roll like clouds across the sky: Look, this is what wecherished in our lives, this is what happens to people, to stone, tomemory, thanks to a little acid rain, that most noiseless rain, they callit - `time`.This is an experience of the `literature of silence`. Like atelepathic séance. The Covetous Knight's soliloquy over a chest ofdevaluated bank notes. Poor Knight! Over a hundred shots taken at the speedof 1/100 - in all, why that's just around a second! Someone else's story,made up mostly of the same things or signs as mine or yours, only linked ina different way to yield a personal fate. In particular, or rather, mostimportantly, it included a City which inspired a dream about the meaning ofexistence, and a Contemporary who succeeded in rendering the tonality ofthat meaning. But the second has passed, having absorbed almost all thatcould be held dear. The light wanes. The sound is off. And a questionarises: Out of that which man has lost forever, is there anything that hepossesses for eternity? The gaze, seasoned with peppery essence of silver,shows irony, pain, and tenderness.

Samuil Lurie, Neva Magazine(St.Petersburg, Russia)

Lemkhin's photography replies to Brodsky's verse.
Photography informs the poetics of Joseph Brodsky, photographer's son and himself no novice to the camera. Mikhail Lemkhin's double homage to the recently deceased poet and the city of his -- and Lemkhin's -- birth shouldbe thought of as photography's own reply to Brodsky. Lemkhin calls his_Joseph Brodsky, Leningrad_ a photo-poem; to this one might only add thatit is a particularly Brodskian photo-poem -- Brodskian not in its type ofmontage but in its predilection for montage, not in its sensibility but inthe realities it conveys. To imitate Brodsky is to traduce Brodsky. Lemkhinunderstands that Brodsky's prime legacy is intellectual independence; hisphotography engages Brodsky's poetry rather than illustrates it, workswith, rather than within, its visual counterparts of Brodsky's speech. Theend-result belongs on the bookshelf as much as it does on the coffee-table. ... Read more

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A Platonic dialogue in the form of a double anachronism--the action takes place two centuries after our era--Joseph Brodsky’s only play, Marbles, is set in a prison cell that alone provides for the three unities of classic drama: those of time, place, and action. A nightmare rather than a utopia, this play proceeds according to the immanent logic of mental aggravation as its two characters, the inmates Publius and Tullius, examine the tautology of their psychological, historical, and purely physical confines. The fusion of its dour, somewhat terrifying vision with the macabre hilarity of its verbal texture allows Marbles to take its audience beyond the farthest reaches of the theatre of the absurd, into territory more suitable for modernist imagination than for human experience.
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From his imprisonment in the Soviet Union and subsequent flight to the United States to a new beginning and international fame, Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky was one of the most fascinating literary figures of modern times. Through his recorded conversations with Brodsky, cultural critic Solomon Volkov has recreated the poet's journey through the 20th century. Photos National author publicity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unique look into the poet's mind
Solomon Volkov had a very good idea in putting together this book. Over a period of many years, he sat down with Brodsky and interviewed him about poetry, metaphysics and world events (with a little gossip thrown in for good measure). The result is a thorough and fascinating look at Brodsky's opinions at many different points in time. And the conversations are not just
one-sided: Volkov keeps up with Brodsky just fine, so it's like listening in on a tete-a-tete between two brilliant minds.If you like Brodsky you will love this book.

Lone Wolf Poet:Review of"Conversations with Joseph Brodsky
If you wade into the book,"Conversations with Joseph Brodsky," by Solomon Volkov (Free Press, 1998,) more or less by accident, as I did, prepare for immersion in deep waters. I was only peripherally aware of Brodsky's work, his background as a major Russian Jewish writer, emigree, and later Nobel Prize winner and American Poet Laureate based on reading his short poetic volume,"Watermark," (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1992.) Based on this work alone I should have been prepared for the depths of thinking, the force of personality, and the scholarly mind that earned him his esteemed position and global reputation as the,"Lone Wolf of Poetry."Brodsky is, if nothing else,like one of those rare gems we find originally mined from and cut to shape on Russian soil, but later ending up here in the United States, much to our cultural enrichment. Once here, in this setting of freedom,they seem to shine even more brilliantly than they ever could in their homeland. Clearly, poetry is Brodsky's realm, and yet in Volkov's meticulous rendering,(the book represents a compiliation of more than fifteen years of purposeful dialogues with Brodsky,) it is evident that Volkov uncovers the man, his life experiences, and his force of personality in a manner that perhaps Brodksy, with his grand sense of irony would appreciate, perhaps even take perverse pleasure from reading. Hearing Brodsky literally thinking out loud, as this book allows us to do, adds a deeper dimension to an understanding of his life's work, and passion. Tragically, Brodsky suffered an untimely death by heart attack Jan. 28,1996 at the age of fifty-five. The reason I say perverse appreciation, is that Brodsky, in his conversations, claims that a poet's work alone should speak for him, that one needs no further digging into the poet's personal life in order to grasp the significance of his writing. Among the many topics Brodsky thinks out loud about are some perhaps unexpected ones.For example, his love for the poetry of Robert Frost, W.H.Auden, and Robert Lowell, as well as his love for the great Russian Poets, Anna Akhmatova, Pushkin, and Marina Tsvetaeva.I found myself scrambling for my long buried volume,"The Poetry of Robert Frost, (Holt Rinehart and Winston,1969) to find the poems Brodsky discusses," Servant to Servants," and " The Wood-Pile."Even as I am reading his commentary, I have to remind myself that Brodsky is quoting these American poems from memory, improvising freely like a brilliant jazz soloist, a John Coltrane taking off in counterpoint to the questions Volkov poses to him. It's a brilliant duet in dialogue form.As such, if you love literature, and poetry, and know of Brodsky's work, or even if you have never heard of Brodksy, but would like to know more about Russian writers, this book is a treasure chest filled with literary gems. Also, it needs to be emphasized that in great measure, it is Solomon Volkov's remarkable ability to stimulate and challenge Brodsky on issues that makes the dialectic so vital.Clearly, Volkov's depth of knowledge, common Russian upbringing, and his own aesthetic sensibilities serve to bring out the best in Brodsky.Towards the end of the book they get into an intense dialogue about their homeland, in particualr, St.Petersburg, a city that looms very large in the background, much like the Chorus in Greek drama.Here the discourse becomes deeply personal, going far beyond the academic realm of literary works, and anecdotes about other writer's lives.St. Petersburg is an area that Volkov knows something about, as evidenced by his recent book,"St. Petersburg: A Cultural History." In the heat of their discussion Brodsky suddenly takes off on an inspired solo:"...in as much as Petersburg is a city by the sea, so the notion of freedom-perhaps phantasmagorical, but very powerful-inevitably arises in the consciousness of anyone living there. In this city, the individual is always going to strive to reach beyond because the space in front of him is not limited or delimited by land. Hence, the dream of unlimited freedom.This is why I think that in this city it is more natural to reject the whole existing world order..."It strikes me as particularly painful that this volume is the last, unless Volkov compiles a 2nd companion volume based on his records. No more chances to raise the hand to ask the master to explain what he meant when he said such and such. As was his wish, we now have to read his poems to figure it out for ourselves. ... Read more

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Joseph Brodsky was a great contrarian and believed, against the received wisdom of our day, that good writing could survive translation. He was right, I think, though you had to wonder when you saw how badly his own work fared in English. But then perhaps the Russians hadn't expelled a great poet so much as exposed us to one of their virulent personality cults. Yet Brodsky's essays are interesting. Composed in a rather heroically determined English, clumsily phrased and idiomatically challenged, they are still inventive and alive. There are suggestive analyses of favorite poems by Hardy, Rilke, and Frost in this book, and a moving meditation on the figure of Marcus Aurelius. Though too often Brodsky goes on at self-indulgent length, he usually recaptures our attention with a characteristic aside: "The fact that we are livingdoes not mean we are not sick."
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Brodsky on Frost
I do not know whether I will be able to read the pieces in On Grief and Reason.I had read the title essay, which says that Frost is rough and goes through his "Home Burial," in the New Yorker, I think, and saved it, and it had deteriorated.I bought the book for the essay.It is that important, Brodsky is that important.It is the best single reading of a Frost poem that I have ever seen, but good-better-bests is not the issue.It is full of assumptions that everyone should have about what poetry is.It is how to read poetry.Stuart Filler ... Read more

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Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) is unquestionably the greatest poet to emerge from postwar Russia and one of the great minds of the last century.

After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1972, Brodsky transformed himself from a stunned and unprepared émigré into, as he himself termed it, "a Russian poet, an English essayist, and, of course, an American citizen."

In interviews from 1972 to 1995, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations covers the course of his exile. The last interview dates from just ten weeks before his death. In talks, he calibrates the process of his remarkable reinvention from a brilliant, brash, but decidedly provincial Leningrad poet to an international man of letters and an erudite Nobel Prize laureate.

Brodsky's poetry earned him a Nobel, and his essays won him awards and international acclaim. This volume shows that there was a third medium, in addition to poetry and essays, in which Brodsky excelled--the interview. Although he said that "in principle prose is simply spilling some beans, which poetry sort of contains in a tight pod," he nevertheless emerges as an extraordinary and inventive conversationalist. This volume includes not only his notable interviews that helped consolidate Brodsky's international reputation but also early and hard-to-find interviews in journals that have since disappeared.

Cynthia L. Haven is a literary critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Cortland Review, and Stanford Magazine. Her work also has been published in Civilization, the Washington Post, and the Georgia Review. ... Read more

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Christmas poems by the Nobel Laureate

To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother's breast, the
steam out
of the ox's nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior, the team
of Magi, the presents heaped by the door, ajar.
He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.
--from "Star of the Nativity"

Joseph Brodsky, who jokingly referred to himself as "a Christian by correspondence," endeavored from the time he "first took to writing poems seriously," to write a poem for every Christmas.He said in an interview: "What is remarkable about Christmas?The fact that what we're dealing with here is the calculation of life--or, at the very least, existence--in the consciousness of an individual, a specific individual."He continued, "I liked that concentration of everything in one place--which is what you have in that cave scene."There resulted a remarkable sequence of poems about time, eternity, and love, spanning a lifetime of metaphysical reflection and formal invention.

In Nativity Poems six superb poets in English have come together to translate the ten as yet untranslated poems from this sequence, and the poems are presented in English in their entirety in a beautiful, pocket-sized edition illustrated with Mikhail Lemkhin's photographs of winter-time St. Petersburg.


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Customer Reviews (3)

Fine translations, beautifully presented
(This is a slightly revised version of my review of the hardback edition of this book which was posted on the UK site of Amazon back in 2002.)

Buy this book for the excellent translations. While there can be no substitute for reading a major poet in his own language, the efforts by Melissa Green, Seamus Heaney, Glyn Maxwell, Paul Muldoon, Derek Walcott and Richard Wilbur are arguably as good as translation of poetry ever gets.

Bilingual editions are not to everyone's taste, but here this format seems to work really well, not least because approximately half of the translations in the book preserve the metre and rhyme scheme of the originals - so readers with at least some knowledge or Russian can try comparing the facing pages, which is as entertaining as it is rewarding. Brodsky's own English version of 'January 1, 1965' is a tour de force of form-preserving translation.

I am not at all sure that including an interview with the author was a good idea, especially because much of the conversation there rotates around the nativity poems themselves. Yes, some poets do not mind discussing their work rationally, but publishing a transcript of such a conversation under the same cover with the poems discussed cannot but take away some of the magic.

Editor's Note mentions that "Christmas" and "Nativity" are the same word in Russian. Quite. But can this ambiguity alone justify inclusion of 'Speech over spilled Milk' in this book? The only relation between this poem and the theme of the collection is that Christmas is mentioned in the first line, though it turns into New Year later on. 'Speech over Spilled Milk' is a fine poem, important for appreciating early Brodsky and beautifully translated, but here it sticks out like a sore thumb: both the subject and the style are completely out of place, and its size (nearly a quarter of the whole book!) damages the rhythm of the piece-to-piece flow which is vital in a small collection of poetry. I would probably also drop 'Lagoon', on the same basis as 'Speech...' and because the recurring image of a ship there does not mix well with the desert landscape implied by the overall concept of the collection.

Purely chronological arrangement of poems is generally reserved for comprehensive editions with an academic flavour to them. Nevertheless, it does not look unnatural in this book of a very different kind. Besides, this way it is easier to notice that the nativity poems that made it into the book were written over a period of precisely 33 years. Very appropriate; I wonder whether it was intentional.

Sadly, I spotted a few inaccuracies on first reading. "M.V." should read "M.B." in the dedication of '25.XII.1993' (the initials must have been transliterated twice). "Brodsky, Joseph, 1940-" in the Library of Congress Data is an unpleasant oversight: the author had been dead for over 5 years when this book was first published. There are misplaced stanzas in the translation of 'Lullaby' and a misunderstood passage about a villager in the translation of "With riverbanks of frozen chocolate, a city..." (to be fair, the syntax of the original gets rather convoluted at that point).

As far as the look and feel of the hardback edition is concerned, the publishers couldn't have done a better job. It is as books used to be: a visual feast and a sheer pleasure to handle. Tastefully and sparingly illustrated with superb period photographs of snow-covered Leningrad.

MARVELOUS NOBEL POET'S TRIBUTE TO CHRIST'S BIRTH
Joseph Brodsky leaves his final legacy with these poems in tribute to Jesus Christ and the Grand Miracle of Incarnation of
God into Man. Several striking features make this a must-have volume for poetry lovers and those interested in the literature
of contemporary Nobel Laureates:

1)The original Russian/Cyrillic Alphabet version of each poem is included with the translation on the facing page

2)Most of the translations are by the author,retaining the spirit as well as the letter of the original poem

3)The remaining translations are outstandingly faithful to the original, by consummate craftsmen in their own right: Richard
Wilbur,Anthony Hecht,Seamus Heaney,Derek Walcott,Glyn Maxwell

4)All poems are focussed on one central event: the supernatural
miraculous birth of Jesus Christ,the Son of God as a cause for worldwide celebration. Brodsky takes great care not to digress
into personal analysis,self-introspection, or theological interpretation, but lets the impressions of the Incarnation on the world around him be the theme of his poems

5)A special bonus at the end of the book is a candid interview with Brodsky shortly before his death in 1997 which probes his religious faith (non-evangelical,uncertain 'quasi-Calvinist'), the difference between Russian Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy,
Christmas vs. Easter in terms of commemoration, reflections on various of his Nativity poems and insights into the mind of the world-renowned Nobelist(e.g. significance of the world's calendar being B.C.-Before Christ and A.D. -Anno Domini, even after 2 millennia).

Special highlights are the translations by Wilbur and Hecht.
Makes a great gift all year-round.

Timeless
A remarkable collection of poems by Joseph Brodsky -- about "Time, eternity, and Love -- which span the life's work of a great poet."

Perhaps it was the time of year in which I read Brodsky's collection of poems (December 2001), with the years great tragedies, and the feeling of helplessness that many people may now share.Whatever may have drawn me to this book, it is a book that I will forever remember.

The poems are translated with great care so as not to lose the beauty of the original work of art.Brodsky has given the reader a genuine gift of the eternal truths of Christmas.His poem entitled "January 1, 1965" is sure to be a favorite for generations to come.

If you enjoy poetry of metaphysical reflection and individual consciousness, you will enjoy reading "Nativity Poems."Definitely a book for the poetry lover on your gift list. ... Read more

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Combining two books of verse that were first published in his native Russian, To Urania was Brodsky's third volume to appear in English. Published in 1988, the year after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, this collection features pieces translated by the poet himself and others, as well as poems written originally in English.

Auden once characterized Brodsky as "a traditionalist . . . interested in what lyric poets of all ages have been interested in . . . encounters with nature . . . reflections upon the human condition, death, and the meaning of existence." Reading the poems in To Urania--by turns cerebral, caustic, comic, and celebratory--we appreciate firsthand a great lyric poet's variety and achievement.
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A treasure
I came to Joseph Brodsky after reading a selection of his poems in Yevtushenko's anthology, 20th Century Russian Poetry.
To Urania is Brodsky's book of poems I treasure most. These are poems of memory and longing - an illustration of how places and people leave imprints and scars in an exile's soul (read mind or body,if you like). Though most poems are translations (including many by Brodsky himself), they manage to convey their meaning in the most concrete terms. Above all, the poems are a record of how adversity can never extinguish hope.

Speaks to hearts today
Joseph Brodsky is a poet of insight and wisdom. Sometimes difficult, but always thought provoking, Brodsky does not leave the reader unaffected. To Urania contains what is possibly my favorite Brodsky poem, "Lithuanian Nocturne." One line in particular haunts my memory:

"Avenging, its permanence, a
place stuffs time with a tenant, a lodger--
with a life-form, and throws up the latch."

Though sometimes distant, To Urania manages to do what the best of poetry does...it reaches across time and culture to speak to hearts today. ... Read more

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Highly praised collection of the work of the great Russian poet, introduced in a major essay by Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky. ... Read more

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Great Poet
Reading these poems will make you understand why Mandelstam is so highly regarded. All 50 are well-translated works of genius. It has the best version of his (suicidal) lampoon of Stalin that I have read in translation. Reading these will make you hungry for more of his work.

as good as it gets
It should be said right at the beginning: Mandelstam is perhaps the best 20th century poet. Joseph Brodsky maybe share his place, but Brodsky is also co-author of this book - he wrote great preface for it. This anthology of Mandelstam's poems is not perfect only because it is not a collection of his complete works. However, this is a book which contains some of his best poems. Both Mandelstam and Brodsky are great examples of how true are the verses by Marina Tzvetvaeva: "In this most Christian of all worlds/ All poets are Jews." The perfection of this poetry is an evidence of the fact how great poetry once was - not a long time ago. Unfortunately, today the world have very little poets even close to Mandelstam. ... Read more

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A poem for children by the Nobel laureate muses on the past discoverers of America-fish, birds, then man-as well as future discoverers. Illustrated in gouache and collage, the poem is ultimately a celebration of a world open to possibilities.
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Discovery by Joseph Brodsky with drawings by Radunsky
What a feast of imagination! My daughter (7) really enjoyed that book. Now she is in the middle of her own discovery of New York but her eyes were opened even wider by the book. Such a delight to have Joseph Brodskyaddressing young children. I'm ashamed to call Radunsky's workillustrations. The book was created by what journalists call "freshpair of eyes," even two pairs! Thanks for the book. ... Read more

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Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott--three Nobel laureates and threeof our generation's greatest poets explore the misconceptions and mythologiesthat surround one of America's most famous and beloved deceased poets--RobertFrost.Amazon.com Review
Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, Nobellaureates all, have written perceptive, affectionate, admiring essayson Robert Frost. Eschewing both of the prevailing caricatures of Frost(the irascible but beloved cracker-barrel philosopher and the shallowmegalomaniac), these writers pay careful attention to the poemsthemselves. They open doors into the world of words that Frostconstructed, and help readers understand the music and the ideas inthose worlds. Derek Walcott's dark reading of Frost's much-quotedclassic, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," is aloneworth the price of Homage to Robert Frost. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This is a wonderful companion to hearing Frost's seemingly off handed reading of his material
This is a marvelous little book to be savoured at every chance and to be re-read as well. Its instructive for both the reader of poetry and the writer of poetry and every student of poetry should read this little masterpiece.It contains many insights and adds a much needed depth to the Frost that many may suspect is not there. Brodsky's erudite rendering of Frost as a student of Virgil makes me want to run back to Virgil and read other works by him besides the Aeneid and go to The Eclogues, also called Bucolics.

Brodsky's explanation of Frost's work is the best I've seen
If you need to read one critical examination of Robert Frost,buy this& read Joseph Brodsky's fantastic, accessible take on "Home Burial".What a great book this is--three fine poets examining a brilliant poet.But it is Brodsky who best holds to the Frost credo--he speaks clearly and plainly.

A glimpse into how poets read poets
Brodsky, Heaney, and Walcott helped me hear the music of Frost's poetry. They don't analyze all that many poems but the insights they offer open the door to others. For example, I learned about Frost's idea of "Sentence-Sounds" in Brodsky's review of "Home Burial" and his idea of the "Sounds of Sense" in Heaney's discussion of "Desert Places". Then when I read Frost's "To a Thinker", which does not appear in "Homage to Frost", I came across the line "...From sound to sense and back to sound", and of course I recognized a familiar theme. If you like Frost, this book makes a nice companion reader. ... Read more