Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky Joseph Brodsky Was Born In Leningrad On May 24 1940. He Left School At The Age Of Fifteen Taking Jobs In A Morgue A Mill A Ship's Boiler Room And A Geological Expedition. During This Time Brodsky Taught Himself English And Polish And Began Writing Poetry. Brodsky Was Exiled From The Soviet Union In 1972 After Serving 18 Months Of A Five-Year Sentence In A Labor Camp In Northern Russia. According To Brodsky Literature Turned His Life Around. "I Was A Normal Soviet Boy " He Said. "I Could Have Become A Man Of The System. But Something Turned Me Upside Down Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground. I Realized What I Am. That I Am Bad." Before Leaving The Soviet Union Brodsky Studied With The Beloved Russian Poet Anna Akhmatova. After His Exile He Moved To America Where He Made Homes In Both Brooklyn And Massachusetts. There According To Fellow Poet Seamus Heaney He Lived "frugally Industriously And In A Certain Amount Of Solitude." Celebrated As The Greatest Russian Poet Of His Generation Brodsky Authored Nine Volumes Of Poetry As Well As Several Collections Of Essays And Received The Nobel Prize For Literature In 1987. His First Book Of Poetry In English Translation Appeared In 1973. In Addition To Teaching Positions At Columbia University And Mount Holyoke College Where He Taught For Fifteen Years Brodsky Served As Poet Laureate Of The United States From 1991 To 1992. In 1993 He Joined With Andrew Carroll To Found The American Poetry & Literacy Project A Not-For-Profit Organization Devoted To Making Poetry A More Central Part Of American Culture "as Ubiquitous " In Brodsky's Words "as The Nature That Surrounds Us And From Which Poetry Derives Many Of Its Similes Or As Ubiquitous As Gas Stations If Not As Cars Themselves." Joseph Brodsky Died On January 28 1996 Of A Heart Attack In His Brooklyn Apartment. read less