Russian poet, English essayist and American citizen

Joseph Brodsky, who died in 1996 at the terribly early age of 55, now enjoys at least three posthumous lives. First, and by far most important, is the Russian poet who was frequently called the best poet of his generation, the heir to Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva. This body of work is inaccessible to most American readers, this writer included, but Brodsky himself saw it as the heart of his achievement. In 1987, after he received the Nobel Prize, an interviewer asked him if he had won as an American poet of Russian origin or a Russian poet living in America, and he firmly replied: „A Russian poet, an English essayist, and, of course, an American citizen.“ Collected Poems in English, by Joseph Brodsky, edited by Ann Kjellberg, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 540 pp / ADAM KIRSCH, The New Republic Online 10.02.00