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

Seven Strophes

I was but what you'd brush

with your palm, what your leaning

brow would hunch to in evening's

raven-black hush.

I was but what your gaze

in that dark could distinguish:

a dim shape to begin with,

later – features, a face.

It was you, on my right,

on my left, with your heated

sighs, who molded my helix,

whispering at my side.

It was you by that black

window's trembling tulle pattern

who laid in my raw cavern

a voice calling you back.

I was practically blind.

You, appearing, then hiding,

gave me my sight and heightened

it. Thus some leave behind

a trace. Thus they make worlds.

Thus, having done so, at random

wastefully they abandon

their work to its whirls.

Thus, prey to speeds

of light, heat, cold, or darkness,

a sphere in space without markers

spins and spins.

-Joseph Brodsky

 A strophe is defined as "The first of a pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Strophes). The title is "Seven Strophes" because there are seven strophes in this poem. Whenever Brodsky starts off a line with "I was", "It was", or "thus", he is actually breaking into another strophe. The content of the poem seems to have dark imagery, but a positive message. Brodsky tells of his relationship with another person, and how they illuminated certain parts of his life, and helped construct his own character. The poem seems to start by describing the initial time where he Brodsky met the person the poem is addressing, and the importance of that person grows throughout the poem. This poem is translated from Russian, and I don't know how well the translation carries over.

Part of Speech

...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
After all these years it hardly matters who
or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,
and your mind resounds not with a seraphic "doh",

only their rustle. Life, that no one dares

to appraise, like that gift horse's mouth,

bares its teeth in a grin at each

encounter. What gets left of a man amounts

to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech. 

-Joseph Brodsky

Brodsky's tone in this poem is very negative. It seems like he is talking about his past experiences in Russia. People in Russia did not dare question their government when Joseph lived there. The memory of those times is dark and distant.

Literary Devices:

"ripened memory which is twice

as hole-ridden as real cheese." - Simile

" like that gift horse's mouth,

bares its teeth in a grin at each

encounter". - Allusion to the phrase "Never look a gift horse in the mouth".

A Polar Explorer

All the huskies are eaten. There is no space

left in the diary, And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.

-Joseph Brodsky

This poem is about a man who is exploring arctic land and has been lost or trapped. He's eaten his dogs, filled up his diary, and now he's looking at old photographs of his family members. Just like the stocking on a woman in one of his photographs, gangrene is climbing up his leg. His time is running out.

Brodsky obviously wanted to portray a picture of a man either fictional or historical with this poem. He did a very good job with imagery, and the mental picture he creates is very vivid.

Literary Devices:

"...like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene". - Simile

A List of Some Observation...

A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body bulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence, they'll no doubt expose
a fossil bivalve propped behind this gauze
cloth, with the print of lips under the print of fringe,
mumbling "Good night" to a window hinge. 

-Joseph Brodsky

This poem simply seems like a list of observations about the world. Whether Brodsky is describing nature, landscapes, people, he does so very poetically. It's almost as though he's writing about the view he has from a window, as he says that people will find his fossil behind a glacier, mouthing the words "Good night" to a window hinge.

Literary Devices:
"Water is glass's most public form" - Metaphor
"mumbling 'good night' to a window hinge" - Personification/Addressing a non living entity

Joseph Brodsky's Life

Joseph Brodsky is a Russian-American poet born May 24th 1940.

He was born in Leningrad, Russia when the Soviet Union was in power. He and his family lived in poverty and nearly died of starvation during Joseph's early years. He held a variety of jobs during his teenage life. He worked in a morgue, in hospitals, a ship's boiler room, and went on geological expeditions.

In 1955, Joseph started writing political poetry for an underground journal called Sintaksis.

In 1960, he met another political poet, Anna Akhmatova, who influenced his work greatly.

He met Marina Basmanova in 1962 in St. Petersburg. They were partners and had a son, but were never married due to restrictions set by the Soviet Union.

In 1963, a Soviet newspaper called Joseph's poetry "pornographic and anti-Soviet". In retaliation for his anti-government poetry, Joseph was put in a mental institution and eventually arrested. He was sent to prison for parasitism and became a symbol of artistic dissidence for all of Russia.

In 1972, Brodsky came to the United States. With some help from other US poets, he started teaching at the University of Michigan. He taught and spoke at many other school in the states.

In 1987, Joseph won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was given this award for his "all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity."

In 1991, Joseph became the Poet Laureate of the United States. 

On January 28th, 1996, Joseph died of a heart attack while in his New York City apartment. He was 55 years old.