Nativity Poems [Hardcover]

Joseph Brodsky (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374219400 | ISBN-13: 978-0374219406 | Publication Date: November 10, 2001 | Edition: 1st

Christmas poems by the Nobel Laureate

To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother's breast, the steam
out of the ox's nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior, the team
of Magi, the presents heaped by the door, ajar.
He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.

Joseph Brodsky, who jokingly referred to himself "a Christian by correspondence," endeavored from the time he "first took to writing poems seriously," to write a poem for every Christmas. He said in an interview: "What is remarkable about Christmas? The fact that what we're dealing with here is the calculation of life--or, at the very least, existence--in the consciousness of an individual, a specific individual." He continued "I liked that concentration of everything in one place--which is what you have in that cave scene." There resulted a remarkable sequence of poems about time, eternity, and love, spanning a lifetime of metaphysical reflection and formal invention.

In Nativity Poems six superb poets in English have come together to translate the ten as yet untranslated poems from this sequence, and the poems are presented in English in their entirety for the first time, in a beautiful, pocket-sized edition drawing on the Renaissance imagery that Brodsky identified as the poems' inspiration.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning when he "first took up writing poems seriously," former U.S. poet laureate Joseph Brodsky, who died in 1996 at age 56, wrote a Christmas poem each year. Of the 18 Nativity Poems of this holiday collection, 10 are previously untranslated, and are presented bilingually. Among the renderers are Seamus Heaney, Anthony Hecht, Paul Muldoon, Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur and Brodsky himself. Glyn Maxwell's excellent version of "Speech over Spilt Milk" finds "God/ has lighted in the blue immense/ the planets, icon lamps to glow/ before the face we cannot know./ What's poetry but a review/ of the existing evidence."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Every year from 1962 to 1993 during the Christmas season, Nobel prize-winning poet Brodsky, who came to the United States in 1972 as an exile from the Soviet Union, endeavored to write a "nativity poem." Frequently a loner, the poet often wrote with an acerbic "bah-humbug" sort of air, as in the poem tellingly titled, "Speech over Spilled Milk": "O, the damnable craft of the poet./ The phone doesn't ring, and the future? A diet." Other poems center on the event of the nativity. Brodsky was, in his own words, "not a churchgoer" and a "Christian by correspondence" who was "sometimes a believer and sometimes not." Yet in "Flight into Egypt" he wrote, "Not divining his role, the Infant drowsed/ in a halo of curls that would quickly become/ accustomed to radiance." For this enjoyable collection, six poets (including the author) have ably undertaken the translations from the original Russian (which appears on facing pages), preserving in most cases the meter of the original. The collection ends with an illuminating conversation with the author. Highly recommended. Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (November 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374219400
• ISBN-13: 978-0374219406
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,280,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MARVELOUS NOBEL POET'S TRIBUTE TO CHRIST'S BIRTH, January 15, 2002

By 

B.D. (Rancho San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nativity Poems (Hardcover)

Joseph Brodsky leaves his final legacy with these poems in tribute to Jesus Christ and the Grand Miracle of Incarnation of
God into Man. Several striking features make this a must-have volume for poetry lovers and those interested in the literature
of contemporary Nobel Laureates:

1)The original Russian/Cyrillic Alphabet version of each poem is included with the translation on the facing page

2)Most of the translations are by the author,retaining the spirit as well as the letter of the original poem

3)The remaining translations are outstandingly faithful to the original, by consummate craftsmen in their own right: Richard
Wilbur,Anthony Hecht,Seamus Heaney,Derek Walcott,Glyn Maxwell

4)All poems are focussed on one central event: the supernatural
miraculous birth of Jesus Christ,the Son of God as a cause for worldwide celebration. Brodsky takes great care not to digress
into personal analysis,self-introspection, or theological interpretation, but lets the impressions of the Incarnation on the world around him be the theme of his poems

5)A special bonus at the end of the book is a candid interview with Brodsky shortly before his death in 1997 which probes his religious faith (non-evangelical,uncertain 'quasi-Calvinist'), the difference between Russian Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy,
Christmas vs. Easter in terms of commemoration, reflections on various of his Nativity poems and insights into the mind of the world-renowned Nobelist(e.g. significance of the world's calendar being B.C.-Before Christ and A.D. -Anno Domini, even after 2 millennia).

Special highlights are the translations by Wilbur and Hecht.
Makes a great gift all year-round.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless, December 23, 2001

By 

Shelley Smith (Wichita, KS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nativity Poems (Hardcover)

A remarkable collection of poems by Joseph Brodsky -- about "Time, eternity, and Love -- which span the life's work of a great poet."

Perhaps it was the time of year in which I read Brodsky's collection of poems (December 2001), with the years great tragedies, and the feeling of helplessness that many people may now share. Whatever may have drawn me to this book, it is a book that I will forever remember.

The poems are translated with great care so as not to lose the beauty of the original work of art. Brodsky has given the reader a genuine gift of the eternal truths of Christmas. His poem entitled "January 1, 1965" is sure to be a favorite for generations to come.

If you enjoy poetry of metaphysical reflection and individual consciousness, you will enjoy reading "Nativity Poems." Definitely a book for the poetry lover on your gift list.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine translations, beautifully presented, September 13, 2009

By 

Oldthinker - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nativity Poems: Bilingual Edition (Paperback)

(This is a slightly revised version of my review of the hardback edition of this book which was posted on the UK site of Amazon back in 2002.)

Buy this book for the excellent translations. While there can be no substitute for reading a major poet in his own language, the efforts by Melissa Green, Seamus Heaney, Glyn Maxwell, Paul Muldoon, Derek Walcott and Richard Wilbur are arguably as good as translation of poetry ever gets.

Bilingual editions are not to everyone's taste, but here this format seems to work really well, not least because approximately half of the translations in the book preserve the metre and rhyme scheme of the originals - so readers with at least some knowledge or Russian can try comparing the facing pages, which is as entertaining as it is rewarding. Brodsky's own English version of 'January 1, 1965' is a tour de force of form-preserving translation.

I am not at all sure that including an interview with the author was a good idea, especially because much of the conversation there rotates around the nativity poems themselves. Yes, some poets do not mind discussing their work rationally, but publishing a transcript of such a conversation under the same cover with the poems discussed cannot but take away some of the magic.

Editor's Note mentions that "Christmas" and "Nativity" are the same word in Russian. Quite. But can this ambiguity alone justify inclusion of 'Speech over spilled Milk' in this book? The only relation between this poem and the theme of the collection is that Christmas is mentioned in the first line, though it turns into New Year later on. 'Speech over Spilled Milk' is a fine poem, important for appreciating early Brodsky and beautifully translated, but here it sticks out like a sore thumb: both the subject and the style are completely out of place, and its size (nearly a quarter of the whole book!) damages the rhythm of the piece-to-piece flow which is vital in a small collection of poetry. I would probably also drop 'Lagoon', on the same basis as 'Speech...' and because the recurring image of a ship there does not mix well with the desert landscape implied by the overall concept of the collection.

Purely chronological arrangement of poems is generally reserved for comprehensive editions with an academic flavour to them. Nevertheless, it does not look unnatural in this book of a very different kind. Besides, this way it is easier to notice that the nativity poems that made it into the book were written over a period of precisely 33 years. Very appropriate; I wonder whether it was intentional.

Sadly, I spotted a few inaccuracies on first reading. "M.V." should read "M.B." in the dedication of '25.XII.1993' (the initials must have been transliterated twice). "Brodsky, Joseph, 1940-" in the Library of Congress Data is an unpleasant oversight: the author had been dead for over 5 years when this book was first published. There are misplaced stanzas in the translation of 'Lullaby' and a misunderstood passage about a villager in the translation of "With riverbanks of frozen chocolate, a city..." (to be fair, the syntax of the original gets rather convoluted at that point).

As far as the look and feel of the hardback edition is concerned, the publishers couldn't have done a better job. It is as books used to be: a visual feast and a sheer pleasure to handle. Tastefully and sparingly illustrated with superb period photographs of snow-covered Leningrad.