Nobel's Glow Reflects on OU
Randy Ellis, The Oklahoman
When New York poet Joseph Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, he brought prestige not only to himself, but to the University of Oklahoma's Neustadt International Prize for Literature.…
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Oklahoman
When New York poet Joseph Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, he brought prestige not only to himself, but to the University of Oklahoma's Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Brodsky, an exile from the Soviet Union, was a juror for OU's Neustadt Prize in 1978 and presented poet Czeslaw Milosz, who won the Neustadt award that year. Milosz went on to win the Nobel Prize two year's later and now Brodsky has won the same award.

"We have had 13 connections between our award and the Nobel," said Ivar Ivask, editor of World Literature Today OU's highly regarded literary journal.

Two Neustadt laureates, four jurors and seven candidates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes in literature, he said.

Ivask said Neustadt sponsors pride themselves on selecting jurors as qualified to win the award as the entrants.

Ivask described Brodsky as a "very sophisticated poet who is in the mainstream of Russian poetry. He's a traditionalist and a classicist."

"Everybody talks about making Oklahoma more cosmopolitan and more international," Ivask said. "We've done it. Literature and the arts is something that is very important." BIOG: NAME:

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