Joseph Brodsky was one of the younger generation of Russian poets - though most of his work has never been published in Russia. He was exiled in 1972, and settled in America. His poetry is personal and meditative, infused with a deep sense of suffering and having close affinities with the English metaphysical poets. He is concerned with the realities of love and death, of separation and solitude and with the 'unity of poetry and life' and their struggle against the 'dead things'. In the words of W.H.Auden, Brodsky is a 'poet of the first order, a man of whom his country should be proud'.
Joseph Brodsky was one of the younger generation of Russian poets - though most of his work has never been published in Russia. He was exiled in 1972, and settled in America. His poetry is personal and meditative, infused with a deep sense of suffering and having close affinities with the English metaphysical poets. He is concerned with the realities of love and death, of separation and solitude and with the 'unity of poetry and life' and their struggle against the 'dead things'. In the words of W.H.Auden, Brodsky is a 'poet of the first order, a man of whom his country should be proud'.