'A yardstick for language'

 

“Everyindividual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as aguide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.”– Joseph Brodsky

Born in Leningrad on this date in 1940, Brodsky first started writing at age15 getting published before he was out of high school.  Hisearly writings got him in deep trouble with both Stalin and his successor Nikita Khrushchevas being “anti-Soviet” and by his late 20s he had been jailed, “confined”to a mental institution, and finally expelled from hishomeland.  Luckily for the writing world,he came to live in the United States thanks to the  help of poet W. H. Auden.
From that point until his death in 1996, hetaught writing and poetry at many different U.S. universities, including Yale, Columbia and Michigan before becoming a full-time facultymember at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts.                  In 1987, Brodsky was awardedthe Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbuedwith clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” And in 1991, he was appointedUnited States Poet Laureate, the first naturalized citizen to be so honored.
He saidcoming to America was the best thing that could have happened to him.  After living under totalitarianism andoppression America was a breath of fresh air that renewed his spirit andbelief in his fellow human beings. “Cherish your human connections: yourrelationships with friends and family,” he advised.  “Knowhow delightful it is to find a friend ineveryone you meet.”