- Person
- Joseph Brodsky
- Lived
- 1940–1996
- Field
- Poetry and essays
- From
- Russian-American
The story
Joseph Brodsky arrived in the United States in 1972 after the Soviet Union expelled him and left him stateless. He became an American citizen in 1977, was proud of that citizenship and valued the freedoms it gave him. By the time he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1991 he had won the Nobel Prize and taught at colleges across the country. The Librarian of Congress remarked that his appointment was a reminder of how much American creativity came from people not born in America.
Brodsky was puzzled that poetry did not draw the large audiences in America that it did in Russia. He regarded poetry as language's highest degree of maturity and wanted everyone to have access to it. In his opening remarks as Laureate in October 1991 he argued that a society which fails to read or listen to its poets condemns itself to the inferior speech of the politician, the salesman and the charlatan. Poetry, he said, was not mere entertainment but humanity's evolutionary and linguistic beacon. His address was later printed in Poetry Review.
To close the gap he made a practical proposal. Inexpensive anthologies of the best American poets, he suggested, should be made available in hotels and airports, hospitals and supermarkets. He thought that people who were restless, fearful, lonely or weary might pick one up and discover that others had felt the same emotions before them and had used them to celebrate life rather than escape from it.
According to the Librarian of Congress, James Billington, the idea was taken up, and thousands of such books were placed where people could come across them out of need or curiosity. Billington also recalled that hearing Brodsky read Anna Akhmatova's poems in Russian at the Library of Congress was an experience to make one's hair stand on end.
Brodsky served as Laureate in 1991 and 1992. In 1993 he carried the campaign forward by co-founding the American Poetry & Literacy Project with Andrew Carroll. His insistence that poetry belongs in everyday places, not only in classrooms and bookshops, remains one of the most memorable ideas any Laureate has put forward.
Why it matters
Brodsky's campaign put poetry within reach of ordinary people in everyday places, far beyond classrooms and bookshops.
About Joseph Brodsky
Leningrad-born poet tried as a “social parasite” and exiled by the Soviet Union, who became a Nobel laureate in 1987 and Poet Laureate of the United States.
More about Joseph Brodsky
- Joseph Brodsky taught poetry for 15 years at Mount HolyokeJoseph Brodsky, who never finished school, became a professor of literature and taught at Mount Holyoke College for fifteen years.
- Joseph Brodsky defended the poet's calling at his trialCharged with 'social parasitism' in 1964, Joseph Brodsky defended his right to be a poet, and a smuggled transcript made him a symbol of free art.
- Joseph Brodsky co-founded a poetry literacy projectIn 1993 Joseph Brodsky and Andrew Carroll founded the American Poetry & Literacy Project to make poetry a central part of American life.
Sources
- Joseph Brodsky Wikipedia
- Joseph Brodsky Academy of American Poets
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.