Conversations with Joseph Brodsky

<p>Biography -- Literary Criticism</p><p>Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) is unquestionably the greatest poet to emerge from postwar Russia and one of the great minds of the last century.</p><p>After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1972 Brodsky transformed himself from a stunned and unprepared emigre into as he himself termed it "a Russian poet an English essayist and of course an American citizen."</p><p>In interviews from 1972 to 1995 <em>Joseph Brodsky: Conversations</em> covers the course of his exile. The last interview dates from just ten weeks before his death. In talks he calibrates the process of his remarkable reinvention from a brilliant brash but decidedly provincial Leningrad poet to an international man of letters and an erudite Nobel Prize laureate.</p><p>Brodsky's poetry earned him a Nobel and his essays won him awards and international acclaim. This volume shows that there was a third medium in addition to poetry and essays in which Brodsky excelled--the interview. Although he said that "in principle prose is simply spilling some beans which poetry sort of contains in a tight pod" he nevertheless emerges as an extraordinary and inventive conversationalist. This volume includes not only his notable interviews that helped consolidate Brodsky's international reputation but also early and hard-to-find interviews in journals that have since disappeared.</p><p>Cynthia L. Haven is a literary critic at the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em> and a regular contributor to <em>Times Literary Supplement</em> the <em>Los Angeles Times Book Review</em> the <em>Cortland Review</em> and <em>Stanford Magazine</em>. Her work also has been published in <em>Civilization</em> the <em>Washington Post</em> and the <em>Georgia Review</em>.</p>