Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets

by Irena Grudzińska-Gross

This intimate portrayal of the friendship between two icons of twentieth-century poetry, Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky, highlights the parallel lives of the poets as exiles living in America and Nobel Prize laureates in literature. To create this truly original work, Irena Grudzinska Gross draws from poems, essays, letters, interviews, speeches, lectures, and her own personal memories as a confidant of both Milosz and Brodsky. The dual portrait of these poets and the elucidation of their attitudes toward religion, history, memory, and language throw a new light on the upheavals of the twentieth-century. Gross also incorporates notes on both poets’ relationships to other key literary figures, such as W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Mark Strand, Robert Haas, and Derek Walcott.

385 pages, Hardcover

First published November 24, 2009

Reviews

[naisokram · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was looking for Czeslaw Milosz's poetry (knowing that he is one of Brodsky's favorite poets) when I came across this book and decided to begin with it my exploration of Milosz. I'm glad I took up reading this book because it gave me so much insight into Brodsky's life as a poet, not just his poetry.

There are many existential questions discussed here, those of fatherland and otherland, friendship, the estate of poetry, etc. it's a result of an extensive research done by the author that is very admirable.