Amazon.com
In his brilliant, mercurial prose, the late Joseph Brodsky insisted tirelessly on the superiority of poetry. It's ironic, then, that his own poems--at least in their English incarnations--tend to trail his own essays by a country mile. Ordinarily you might pin the blame on the usual suspects: the translators. But Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur, Howard Moss, and Anthony Hecht are hardly hacks for hire, and neither were the other hardy souls who helped Brodsky to ease his Russian verse over the linguistic hurdles. No, the problem has more to do with the poet's stubborn attachment to formalism. Determined to echo his native rhyme schemes and rapid-fire cadences--and to accommodate his marvelous, maddening proliferation of metaphors--Brodsky wrenched his English poetry into one peculiar shape after another. Even when he's half-apologizing (in "A Song to No Music") for his verbal curlicues, he manages to leave most readers scratching their heads: "Scholastics? Almost. Just as well. / God knows. Take any for a spastic / consent. For after all, pray tell, / what in this world is not scholastic?"

All this would be irrelevant if Brodsky were not in fact a writer of dizzying talents. The worst poems here still bear the faint impress of impacted genius, and bring to mind Randall Jarrell's famous line about Walt Whitman--that "only a man with the most extraordinary feel for language, or none whatsoever, could have cooked up [his] worst messes." And when Brodsky manages 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 your church-hooded New / England, the porcupine / sharpens its golden needles / against Bostonian bricks / to a point of needless / blinding shine." He's also a superb observer of the natural landscape, which forces his high-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 (5)

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.

Then it hit me ý he is dead!
Lately I havenÕt paid much attention to American Poetry. Provincial minds who spill their prosy guts over America's kitchen sink or worse and who belong into one of Ophra's spirituality binges. So it completely slipped me by, that the US had a Russian as poet laureate; the name was not familiar.Then I found his collected poems. Critics point to howlers in the translation, especially if committed by the author himself: it is true, there is space for improvement. But to blame it on the justified demand that translations of poetry have to be faithful to content and structure, rather points to inhibitions in the criticÕs judgement. As for me: I found at long last another poet of stature and rank. And yes he deserves a better presentation. (It can be done!)I became interested in his biography - born 1940 ... and then it hit me: he is already dead. And I felt sad, as if I had missed the arrival of a long lost relative. ... Read more

Amazon.com
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 essays. Book Description

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

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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

Amazon.com
A collection of poems in English by Joseph Brodsky, the supremely accomplished Russian poet who stood up to the repression of his native land and then constructed a whole new literary life and a huge reputation while in exile in the United States. Already established as a great Russian poet, Brodsky astonishingly achieved the equivalent in his adoptive language. Most of the poems in So Forth were written during the 10 years before his death, and while many exhibit his newly Americanized tongue, some revel in the mysterious accents that characterized his Russian works.Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Translating the Clouds
A forced exile from Leningrad who went on to live in New York and New England, and teach at Mount Holyoke College, Joseph Brodsky is a serious poet--a brilliant self-translator of his own often brilliant poems--the National Poet Laureate under Clinton--and a man who advocated putting poetry books rather than Bibles in hotes drawers.Well I'm not sure one can find infinite solace or religious consolation proper in this work (which was, if not the last, then among the last of Brodsky's works--with many of the poems written in the mid-nineties shortly before his death in his fifties), one will find moral guidance at its non-preachy best. Like other poets, Brodsky writes of love and loss and the end of the century (one of the half-rhyming translated poems is entitled "fin de siecle"), but he does so with a certain nobility, a certain nongrandiose majesty that lifts him, without any display of effort on his part, to the ranks of the very finest poets ever.Unlike fellow exile Vladimir Nabokov, for example, who seems always to be arguing, thinking about arguing, or making a flourish of having no need to argue, for his posthumous recognition--and whose works, translated by his son, always seem a bit overwritten--Brodsky's poems read fresh and direct in his own translations.And yet, as with the greats of the Russian literary legacy (Chekov's characters are the subject of one poem), we are reminded in reading Brodsky that story-telling and poetry have reached peaks out of the purview of those who cannot appreciate say Pushkin in the original.Observation is a kind of translation, and there is the opposite problem, or rather tendency, of Brodsky's view of America (like Nabokov's) having something strangely quaint and distorted about it--as if strip malls could provide Americans with something more than the generic backdrop against which the exile spins his reveries and measures his memories. It is strange to see the archetypal nonexotic of America made strange through the exile's eyes. We must be grateful for Brodsky for taking the time to translate his own works.In this volume Brodsky laments the passing of time, the aging of lovers, the encroaching of death--he captures long-vanished armies in his poetic net, advises his daughter on where to look for him once he is gone. There is an uncompromising realism in him that is both frightening and refreshing. I thought "Clouds"--"lighter than the body/better than the soul"--one of the best poems ever written--or should I say translated. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

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

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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Customer Reviews (2)

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

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

Amazon.com
Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, Nobel laureates all, have written perceptive, affectionate, admiring essays on Robert Frost. Eschewing both of the prevailing caricatures of Frost (the irascible but beloved cracker-barrel philosopher and the shallow megalomaniac), these writers pay careful attention to the poems themselves. They open doors into the world of words that Frost constructed, and help readers understand the music and the ideas in those worlds. Derek Walcott's dark reading of Frost's much-quoted classic, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," is alone worth 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

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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

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Considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet of his generation, Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. Daniel Weissbort, closely associated with Brodsky as friend and translator, has produced a fascinating biographical (and autobiographical) study, giving particular attention to the problems of "Englishing" Brodsky's poems and Brodsky's relations with English. It is a telling contribution to translation studies and a searching meditation on the nature of language itself.

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A fine selection from this essential Russian poet.

"One can hear Mandelstam's real voice in these translations. The nervous pure voice of his love, his memory, his culture, and his faith, waverable as a candle in the wind."—From the introduction by 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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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