Customer Reviews

Collected Poems in English

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Don't believe the petty, narrow-minded balderdash about supposed poor translations. Duh, he wrote in another language that most English speakers don't know and aren't about to learn, and it has to be translated so we can read it in English. Wow. The author, who is one of the greatest poets of the century, either translated it himself or had help from other giants of poetry, so it's how he wanted it - and it's brilliant. So it isn't exactly how it was in Russian...Ok, but it's still better than most of the poetry published in the last 50 years. Don't listen to the whining nit-pickers, and enjoy this wonderful collection. If it was up to them [those who are against translation in general] and their grotesque elitism, we wouldn't have anything translated into or out of English, or into or out of any other language, and that would be a disaster. Plus translations aren't anyway near as problematic as they think, but there's no space to go into that here.

This is a large and lovely book. It collects the most significant and important verse of J. Brodsky, winner of the Nobel prize. I highly recommend it.

Brodsky speaks of history's fortune and fate as he attempts a clarification of the poet's role in a world gone amuck. There are some gems here: "On Love," "I Sit By the Window," "Odysseus to Telemachus," "The Butterfly," "Torso," "Elegy: For Robert Lowell," and "Cafe Trieste: SF," to name a few.

Brodsky's poetic voice is imaginative and celestial. His words are as light and time-transcendent as the cloud-walk of heavenly angels.

I also recommend: Z. Herbert, C. Milosz, R. Hass, W. Szymborska, A. Zagajewski, and R. Jeffers.

I had immersed myself in the Russian poets who were Brodsky's precursors (Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Blok), then started reading him, since Akhmatova referred to him at the end of her life. (Brodsky's attendance at Akhmatova's funeral was one of the reasons the Soviet authorities went after him.) At the beginning I found Brodsky's complexity, and the oddness of his figures of speech, disappointing. But I kept coming back to him. Some of it still seems odd, stilted, but I suspect that some of this is due to translation difficulties. And some of the oddness disappears as I read more and learn his utterly original mode of thinking.
His poems are really growing on me. I would have said a month ago that my favorite is "The Butterfly"; but I find myself coming back again and again to "Lullaby of Cape Cod" and "Nunc Dimittis". "The New Jules Verne" is one of the funniest poems I've ever read. "Fin de Siecle"--about growing old (or, more accurately, growing unhealthy)--has just about the most meaningful ending, for me, of anything I've ever read.
I read "Lullaby of Cape Cod" twice today. I can't get its images out of my head: the loss of his home in Russia, what a hot Massachusetts summer night is like, all that can be learned from time and night, the fantasy of Atlantic codfish coming to the door--this is a poem about Cape COD, after all! The man does have a sense of humor-- with which he finally manages to lull himself to sleep.
This is the best book of his poetry. The translations are fairly consistent in tone, especially since he usually either translated them himself or advised those who did. If you buy it, be patient with it. Brodsky rewards patience.

Lately I havenÕt paid much attention to American Poetry. Provincial minds who spill their prosy guts over America's kitchen sink or worse and who belong into one of Ophra's spirituality binges. So it completely slipped me by, that the US had a Russian as poet laureate; the name was not familiar. Then I found his collected poems. Critics point to howlers in the translation, especially if committed by the author himself: it is true, there is space for improvement. But to blame it on the justified demand that translations of poetry have to be faithful to content and structure, rather points to inhibitions in the criticÕs judgement. As for me: I found at long last another poet of stature and rank. And yes he deserves a better presentation. (It can be done!) I became interested in his biography - born 1940 ... and then it hit me: he is already dead. And I felt sad, as if I had missed the arrival of a long lost relative.

This collection brings together Brodsky's work in English, much of which he has been intimately involved in translating. This becomes important in that, for those of us who do not speak Russian, these poems can be considered direct from Brodsky's hand, as opposed to coming through the often suspect medium of independent translator. (This seems to have been discussed in many of these reviews and is well examined in the Forward to this book.) Moreover, Brodsky's attention to meter and rhyme schemes are unerringly original and his ability with the English language is astonishing, surprising, taking the world apart in language and puts it back together in image.

The edition is very appealing. Thick but easy to read.

This is a hefty tome to be sure, an excellent and comprehensive collection of a great poet
with whom I am amazingly only just discovering. Despite an extensive collection of poetry,
novels and non-fiction, I always am excited to discover a great writer that some how managed
to slip under my radar. A formidable writer and fine edition of his work. Bought directly through
Amazon and as always the service is fast and reliable.

brodsky is a great and unfortunately, almost unknown author. this is my second book on him and i deeply recommend it.