Joseph Brodsky

(1940 - 1996)

Expelled by Soviet authorities from his native city of Leningrad in 1972—he had previously been sentenced to five years of hard labor for writing “gibberish” instead of procuring acceptable employment—Joseph Brodsky settled in the United States but spent extended periods of time in Europe. “Brodsky is someone who has tasted extremely bitter bread,” one reviewer wrote of his work, “and his poetry has the air of being ground out between his teeth.” The poet, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, is buried in Venice’s San Michele cemetery.