Synthesis Response

Brodsky's approach to poetry is very personal, and very dark. He focuses on shadowy imagery and themes throughout his works, from describing the last moments of a polar explorer, to a bitter narrative from the point of view of an ancient society being dug up by an archaeologist. His poems can be very pensive in nature, as demonstrated in "A List of Some Observation...", where he'll offer a few varied thoughts on life, humanity, and the passing of time.
His poems seem to reflect the hardships that he endured while being imprisoned by the Soviet Union. "May 24th, 1980" describes his exile from Russia and his thoughts on life and aging.

Brodsky uses a variety of structures for his poems. Typically, they have a standard rhyming structure like ABCA and similar formats. Often, his poems will be separated into stanzas, but he also has a tendency to clump his work together.

Major Influence: Anna Akhmatova

A Widow in Black

A widow in black -- the crying fall
Covers all hearts with a depressing cloud...
While her man's words are clearly recalled,
She will not stop her lamentations loud.
It will be so, until the snow puff
Will give a mercy to the pined and tired.
Forgetfulness of suffering and love --
Though paid by life -- what more could be desired? 

-Anna Akhmatova

This poem is very similar to a lot of Brodsky's work in its arrangement and subject matter. It describes a woman who has been widowed lamenting the loss of her husband. I find this poem is similar in imagery to that of Brodsky's "A Polar Explorer" and "Belfast Tune" in the way that it offers a profile of a person in a single moment.

Alexander by Thebes 

I think, the king was fierce, though young,
When he proclaimed, 'You’ll level Thebes with ground.'
And the old chief perceived this city proud,
He’d seen in times that are in sagas sung.
Set all to fire! The king listed else
The towers, the gates, the temples – rich and thriving…
But sank in thoughts, and said with lighted face,
'You just provide the Bard Home’s surviving.'  

-Anna Akhmatova 


This sounds like there is a definite political message involved in this poem, but I'm not familiar with what it would be referencing. Thebes is a city in Greece, and Alexander is an allusion to the king Alexander the Great. Thebes was destroyed by Alexander the Great during his conquest of Greece.

Joseph met Anna Akhmatova in 1960 and were friends for a very long time. Anna was an already established and well known poet. Her poems were mainly political in nature, and criticized the Soviet Union's oppression and corruption.

 

May 24th, 1980

I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore and nursed me.
Those who forgot me would make a city.
I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles, worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter, planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables, guzzled everything save dry water. I've admitted the sentries' third eye into my wet and foul dreams. Munched the bread of exile; it's stale and warty.
Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl;
switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.
What should I say about my life? That it's long and abhors transparence.
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit.
Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx,
only gratitude will be gushing from it. 

-Joseph Brodsky

Brodsky seems to be descibing the hardships that he has endured in his life, especially his incarceration and exile from the Soviet Union with the line "Quit the country the bore and nursed me". "I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,/carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters" describes living out a prison sentence, and could very well be true for the reader. Brodsky comments on the face that this is all in the past, and that even now that he is older than he was at the time. "Now I am forty./What should I say about my life? That it's long and abhors transparence", gives the message that his life has been long and difficult because of the harships that he endured.

Literary Devices:
"Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit" - Metaphor

Letter to an Archaeologist

Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter
garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;
a scalp so often scalded with boiling water
that the puny brain feels completely cooked.
Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden
rubble which you now arrive to sift.
All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.
Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived.
Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron;
still, it's gentler that what we've been told or have said ourselves.
Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:
what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.
Leave our names alone. Don't reconstruct those vowels,
consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larks
but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours
its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks. 

 -Joseph Brodsky

With this poem, Joseph Brodsky describes a letter from an ancient people to an archaeologist that is digging up their remains. He dwells on assumptions that the man would make, like "All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven./Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived". It feels like the speaker is criticizing the archaeologist with the first few lines, "Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter/garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;/a scalp so often scalded with boiling water/that the puny brain feels completely cooked." which attacks them ferocisioously. The message of the poem seems to be that when arcaeologists discover ancient bones and make assumptions about those people, they are completely wrong because they didn't live in that time, and have no right to assume anything about the people.

Literary Devices:
The speaker is speaking from the dead - Apostrophe


 

Belfast Tune

Here's a girl from a dangerous town
She crops her dark hair short
so that less of her has to frown
when someone gets hurt.

She folds her memories like a parachute.
Dropped, she collects the peat
and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot
here where they eat.

Ah, there's more sky in these parts than, say,
ground. Hence her voice's pitch,
and her stare stains your retina like a gray
bulb when you switch

hemispheres, and her knee-length quilt
skirt's cut to catch the squal,
I dream of her either loved or killed
because the town's too small.

-Joseph Brodsky

Brodsky wants to descibe this girl that he has seen or knows from a small town. He descibes her features with iamgery and meaning, like "She crops her dark hair short/so that less of her has to frown/when someone gets hurt" to describe her short hair, and the look that it gives her. He uses this to describe other features about her, such as "her stare stains your retina like a gray bulb" to describe her gray eyes.

Literary Devices:
"...her stare stains your retina like a gray bulb..." - Simile
"She folds her memories like a parachute." - Simile
"She crops her dark hair short/so that less of her has to frown/when someone gets hurt" - Personification

Elegy

It's not that the Muse feels like clamming up,
it's more like high time for the lad's last nap.
And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best
drives a steamroller across his chest.

And the words won't rise either like that rod
or like logs to rejoin their old grove's sweet rot,
and, like eggs in the frying pan, the face
spills its eyes all over the pillowcase.

Are you warm tonight under those six veils
in that basin of yours whose strung bottom wails;
where like fish that gasp at the foreign blue
my raw lip was catching what then was you?

I would have hare's ears sewn to my bald head,
in thick woods for your sake I'd gulp drops of lead,
and from black gnarled snags in the oil-smooth pond
I'd bob up to your face as some Tirpitz won't.

But it's not on the cards or the waiter's tray,
and it pains to say where one's hair turns gray.
There are more blue veins than the blood to swell
their dried web, let alone some remote brain cell.

We are parting for good, my friend, that's that.
Draw an empty circle on your yellow pad.
This will be me: no insides in thrall.
Stare at it a while, then erase the scrawl. 

-Joseph Brodsky

I'm not quite sure whether this poem is about aging, or seeing a friend die of old age. It could very well be both. Brodsky uses a lot of imagery in this poem, but it's unclear what he's trying to say with it. The focus of the poem seems to shift from talking about betrayal to talking about devotion or love, to talking about dying of old age. It could be a short story or sequence of events being told chronologically.

I was impressed very much so with the structure and language that Brodsky used in this poem, and the imagery in it was very vivid.

Literary Devices:

"drives a steamroller across his chest." - Metaphor

"And the words won't rise either like that rod
or like logs to rejoin their old grove's sweet rot..." - Personification