Joseph Brodsky
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself — as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony — those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror.
—Joseph Brodsky, Writers at Work, 1988
Posted on January 22, 2003 at 7:48 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a "read," commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself.
—Joseph Brodsky, Writers at Work, 1988
Posted on January 8, 2003 at 2:55 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
—Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: Selected Essays
Posted on August 13, 2003 at 6:47 AM
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