Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), Russian-born American poet, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1987. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Brodsky dropped out of high school but educated himself. In the early 1960s he became involved in Russian literary circles, but in 1964, he was charged with “social parasitism” and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. After serving 18 months, however, he was released. In 1972, Brodsky was exiled from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He eventually moved to the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1977.

A major collection of Brodsky's poetry, Selected Poems, was published in English translation in 1973, followed by A Part of Speech in 1980. A volume of his essays, Less Than One, received the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism for 1986. History of the Twentieth Century, a book of his poems, was published the same year. Brodsky's poetry collection To Urania appeared in 1988 and his prose volume Watermark was published in 1992. On Grief and Reason, a collection of essays, was published in 1995.

Brodsky's poetic ability was widely recognized. In 1981, while living in New York City and also teaching literature part of the year at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Brodsky was awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant. In 1987 he received the Nobel Prize in literature, the second youngest person to be so honored (French writer Albert Camus was younger when he won the prize). From 1991 to 1992 Brodsky served a one-year term as U.S. poet laureate.