This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Good style in prose is always hostage to the precision, speed, and laconic intensity of poetic diction. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.' — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation: those of the politician, the salesman… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
By writing... in the language of his society, a poet takes a large step toward it. It is society's job to meet… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed,… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice.… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.' — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old poems I'm… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
