To Urania: Poems - Softcover

Brodsky, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374523339 ISBN 13: 9780374523336

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

The poet, essayist, and playwright Joseph Brodsky (1940-96) came to the United States in 1972, an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and served as Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991 and 1992.

From Library Journal:

Nobel Prize-winner Brodsky is one of the Soviet Union's most distinguished exiles, and evidently the experience has affected him deeply. Having "munched the bread of exile: . . . stale and warty," he knows that "every thing has a limit;/ . . . for despair, it is memory." Indeed, the sense of loss is pervasive, as is the search for permanence. In the remarkable "Lithuanian Nocturne," which finds the poet's specter crossing oceans to visit his confrere Thomas Venclova, Brodsky may see poetry's realm as "the kingdom of air," but his poems are in fact dense with accumulated detail, as if to reassure him that "nothing has changed here." Brodsky's first collection since A Part of Speech ( LJ 8/80 ) , this volume contains previously uncollected works dating from 1968 (e.g., the 1400-line "Gorbunov and Gorchakov") but written mostly in this decade. Essential. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0374523339
• ISBN 13: 9780374523336
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 174