Brodsky, the Poet of the World

At the end of the 20^th century, though, most well-known British and American poets avoid big issues and universal generalizations. Their characteristic poetry describes a rather narrow experience in great detail with technical skill, in a detached way without much emotion. Today, poets need not go to NYC or London to find either a voice or a reputation.

Sometimes reputations are earned at the cost of leaving your own country for good. Such was the case with the Russian-born Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Brodsky (1940—1996). Since 1972 till his untimely death, he was hosted by the United States. His poetic work must have influenced hundreds or poets on both sides of the ocean. Quite obscure to the reader for decades, his literary heritage has been returned to his native country. An attentive reader will discern Eliot's influence, and even John Donne's, in the verses.

He is one of the few Russian poets whose poetry has been enriched and deepened through close contacts with European poetry, British in particular. Indisputably, the Nobel Prize winner for literature of 1987, Joseph Brodsky remains one of the most outstanding poets of the century who refreshed the concept of poetic vision making it ruthlessly sharp and piercing.

One cannot do better than take up a book by Brodsky and read it for the sheer pleasure of it. Brodsky was one of the earliest champions of the perestroika and subsequent revision of ideological and literary stereotypes or misconceptions prevailing in this culture. But he had no illusions about American life-style either. In other words, read and reread Brodsky's poetry.

INDIVIDUAL AND/OR SMALL GROUP TASKS

1. Prepare a mini-lecture on the 19^th century middle-class revolution in poetry.

2. Discuss the Poetical Revolution staged by Emily Dickinson.

3. Dwell on Walt Whitman's school of poetry: Celebrating Queen 'Mob'.

4. Comment on the famous quote: Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori (Aldington, Owen, e.e. cummings).

5. Discuss the peculiarity of free verse writing (Whitman, Frost, Sandburg, and Ginsberg).

6. Comparea poem written by a Russian / Belarusian revolutionary poet with the one written in English at about the same time.