Joseph Brodsky biography
Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky, in Leningrad, Russia. His father was a photographer. He left school when he was 15 and began writing poetry. In 1964 he was sentenced to five years in prison for "social parasitism." He was put in Kresty, a famous Soviet prison, before his sentence was commuted. He was exiled from the U.S.S.R. in 1972, and he went to the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1977. In the U.S. he worked as a visiting professor at several colleges and universities. He also became a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Partisan Review and The Times Literary Supplement.

Brodsky first wrote his poetry in Russian, but he later switched to English. His first collection, Bolshaja Elegua Dzonu Donnu, was published when he was 23 years old. He was named poet laureate of the United States in 1991.

Brodsky died of a heart attack in New York in 1996.

CHRONOLOGY

1940 He was born in Leningrad, Russia. (May 24)

1963 Bolshaja Elegija Dzonu Donnu

1964 He was sentenced to five years of hard labor by the Soviet authorities for "social parasitism."

1965 Stikhotvoreniya I Poemy (Short and long poems)

1970 Ostanocka V Pustyne (A Halt in the Wilderness)

1972 He was exiled from the Soviet Union.; He became a poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

1973 Debut, Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems

1977 Tshast Retshi, V Anglii, Konets Prekrasnok Epohi (The End of a Lovely Era); He became a United States citizen.

1979 A Part of Speech; He was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1981 He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant.

1983 Novyje Stansy K Avguste

1984 Mramor (Marbles)

1986 History of the Twentieth Century, Less Than One

1987 Uraniia (To Urania); He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.; He resigned his membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1991 He was poet laureate of the United States.

1992 Sochineniia, Watermark

1995 On Grief and Reason