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cronosmu's review against another edition
5.0
«Hoy día se halla muy extendida la opinión de que el escritor debería utilizar en su obra el lenguaje de la calle, el lenguaje de la masa. Pese a su apariencia democrática y a sus evidentes ventajas para el escritor, tal consigna representa un intento bastante absurdo de subordinar el arte a la historia. La literatura debería hablar el lenguaje de la gente solo en el caso de que queramos que el Homo sapiens detenga su evolución. De lo contrario, es la gente la que debería hablar el lenguaje de la literatura».
jayshay's review against another edition
4.0
Twenty-one essays by the Nobel prize-winning poet. Two of the essays are his Noble lecture and his acceptance speech, and many of the other essays were written for occasions or lectures. What makes these essays stick is that Brodsky has the knack of living in his prose pieces and imbuing them with his warm, intelligent personality. I would have payed money to eavesdrop on the parents walking out after listening to his 1989 Dartmouth College commencement address, "In Praise of Boredom". Good luck kids! It's all down hill from here. I bet there were some pissed off parents in that crowd, though some others might have been nodding their heads in agreement.
I wasn't as big a fan of the line by line readings of poetry by Frost, Hardy and Rilke, though the title essay on Frost is the best of the lot and mostly manages to transcend the lecture hall feel of the other essays. I'm sure Brodsky was an amazing teacher, but reading lectures when you know there isn't a test tomorrow can be a little tedious.
Who knew, though, that I was going to get a summer reading list for the beach. Want to get up to speed on contemporary modern poetry (at least for the 1st half of the twentieth century)? "If your mother tongue is English, I might recommend to you Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yates, T.S. Elliot, W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop." I'll take that assignment.
I wasn't as big a fan of the line by line readings of poetry by Frost, Hardy and Rilke, though the title essay on Frost is the best of the lot and mostly manages to transcend the lecture hall feel of the other essays. I'm sure Brodsky was an amazing teacher, but reading lectures when you know there isn't a test tomorrow can be a little tedious.
Who knew, though, that I was going to get a summer reading list for the beach. Want to get up to speed on contemporary modern poetry (at least for the 1st half of the twentieth century)? "If your mother tongue is English, I might recommend to you Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yates, T.S. Elliot, W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop." I'll take that assignment.
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