Conversations With Joseph Brodsky

From Booklist Volkov, author of St. Petersburg (1995), began his focused dialogue with Brodsky in 1978, just after the poet underwent his first open-heart surgery at age 38. In his introduction, Volkov shares his hope that this volume will serve as a "kind of Baedeker" to the late Nobel laureate's life and art (it does), then offers a rather startling portrait of Brodsky as an "animal of poetry," a lone wolf to be exact, who was not only brilliant but hypnotic and, at times, menacing. Brodsky's mind, Volkov claims, was "essentially dialogic," a statement proved true in the revelatory conversations that follow. All of their energetic discussions are of keen interest, but it is Brodsky's forthright descriptions--the first ever for public consumption--of his detention in a mental asylum, exile in the North, and expulsion from Russia that leap off the page. At one point, Volkov challenges Brodsky's matter-of-fact approach to discussing these traumas, and Brodsky retorts, "I refuse to dramatize all this!" That's because all the drama and all the fire of his experiences are found in his majestic poetry. What is preserved here is the power and complexity of the man himself. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.