Customer Reviews

To Urania

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Joseph Brodsky is a poet of insight and wisdom. Sometimes difficult, but always thought provoking, Brodsky does not leave the reader unaffected. To Urania contains what is possibly my favorite Brodsky poem, "Lithuanian Nocturne." One line in particular haunts my memory:

"Avenging, its permanence, a
place stuffs time with a tenant, a lodger--
with a life-form, and throws up the latch."

Though sometimes distant, To Urania manages to do what the best of poetry does...it reaches across time and culture to speak to hearts today.

I came to Joseph Brodsky after reading a selection of his poems in Yevtushenko's anthology, 20th Century Russian Poetry.
To Urania is Brodsky's book of poems I treasure most. These are poems of memory and longing - an illustration of how places and people leave imprints and scars in an exile's soul (read mind or body,if you like). Though most poems are translations (including many by Brodsky himself), they manage to convey their meaning in the most concrete terms. Above all, the poems are a record of how adversity can never extinguish hope.