BASC70040 - Joseph Brodsky: Poet and Thinker

Course Description

In “How to Read a Book,” Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) writes, “The more one reads poetry the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be it in political or philosophical discourse, in history, social studies or the art of fiction.” In 1987, Brodsky was awarded a Nobel Prize "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity." Studying Brodsky’s poetry and essays will – hopefully – make us better readers of literary and other texts.

Course Outline

For our first class, please read Collected Poems (pp. 3-52) and Brodsky’s Nobel Lecture, “Uncommon Visage,” in Less Than One (pp. 44-58) or online (http://nobelprize.org).

Notes

Book List

Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems in English (2002). ISBN-13: 978-0-374-52838-6

Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One. Selected Essays (1986). ISBN-13: 978-0374520557

Joseph Brodsky, On Grief and Reason. Essays (1997). ISBN-13: 978-0374525095