[New-Poetry] Joseph Brodsky's Birthday from the Writer's Almanac

[Anny Ballardini]

It's the birthday of poet *Joseph
Brodsky<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,gdl3,dv,gz59,i227,3hrs,fxvj>
*, (books by this
author<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,gdl3,dv,fxop,23d,3hrs,fxvj>)
born in St. Petersburg, Russia (1940). His father was a naval officer who
got kicked out of the service for being Jewish, so the family lived in
poverty. Joseph started writing poetry when he was 15, but in 1963  — when
he was 23 — a Russian newspaper declared that his poetry was "pornographic
and anti-Soviet." The authorities were worried because he was becoming so
popular and his readings were attracting large, enthusiastic crowds. He was
interrogated, he was put in a mental institution, and then he was arrested.
He was sentenced to five years in a labor camp in Siberia, but there was so
much protest that his sentence was commuted after a year and a half. For the
next few years, he continued to write, but he was harassed and finally
expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972.

He went to Austria, where the poet W.H. Auden took Brodsky under his wing
and helped set him up with a teaching position at the University of
Michigan. From there, he went on to teach at Queens College and Mount
Holyoke.

He published poems, plays, and essays, including *A Part of Speech* (1977),
*Less Than One* (1986), and *To Urania* (1988). In 1987, he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in literature — his response was, "A big step for me, a small
step for mankind." Four years later, he became the poet laureate of the
United States. He died in 1996 at age 55.

He said, "After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well.
So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life

-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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