Friday, December 21, 2018

Displaced Poet

for Joseph Brodsky who said:
“The dolce vita is chocolate and champagne.”


He bought bread
in the little shop on the corner,
had it wrapped
mostly for the mystery
and the precious paper,
a blank slate for his poetry
inspired by mingled scents
of poppy seed and yeast,
and a yearning for his homeland
where loaves were crustier
and poets were noted
for their hunger.

smzang

1 comment:

smzang said...

(excerpted from Poetry Foundation) Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky was reviled and persecuted in his native Soviet Union, but the Western literary establishment lauded him as one of that country’s finest poets. From the time he began publishing his verse—both under his own name, and under the name Joseph Brodsky—which was characterized by ironic wit and a spirit of fiery independence, Brodsky aroused the ire of Soviet authorities; he was also persecuted because he was a Jew. He was brought to trial for “parasitism,” and a smuggled transcript of that trial helped bring him to the attention of the West, for he answered his interrogators with courageous and articulate idealism. Brodsky was condemned to a Soviet mental institution and later spent five years in Arkhangelsk, an Arctic labor camp. A public outcry from American and European intellectuals over his treatment helped to secure his early release. Forced to emigrate, he moved to Michigan in 1972, where, with the help of the poet W. H. Auden, he settled in at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as poet-in-residence. He then taught at several universities, including Queens College in New York and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. He continued to write poetry, however, often writing in Russian and translating his own work into English, and eventually winning the Nobel Prize for his work.