Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996), born in Leningrad to a Jewish family, was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1987). Exiled from the Soviet Union, he settled in the United States, where he went on to become the Poet Laureate (1991). His reputation was enhanced by his collections published in English: Selected Poems; A Part of Speech; and To Urania. Among his many honors are doctorates from Yale and Oxford, induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Book Critics Award, for his essay collection Less Than One. Brodsky died of a heart attack at age fifty-five in his Brooklyn Heights apartment.
Photograph by Nancy Crampton.
WORKS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN NARRATIVE:
- December 24, 1971, poetry, in Poems of the Week: 2018–2019