Brodsky, Joseph (Vol. 100) - Karen De Witt (essay date 10 December 1991)
Karen De Witt (essay date 10 December 1991)
SOURCE: "Poet Laureate on Mission to Supermarket's Masses," in The New York Times, December 10, 1991, p. B15.
[In the following essay, De Witt discusses Brodsky's appointment to U.S. poet laureate, focusing in particular on Brodsky's belief that poetry should be published much more widely.]
Small and balding, wisps of light hair straggling across his scalp, Joseph Brodsky hunkered down on a balcony step outside the poetry office in the attic of the Library of Congress. Absent-mindedly he gazed through his cigarette's smoke and the balcony's balustrade at the Capitol where a group of gay activists were protesting.
"Look," he recently commanded a visitor, standing up and peering south at the horizon. "Too late. There was a plane, the sun shining on it like a rocket."
Mr. Brodsky is the first foreign-born poet laureate of the United States, but if one expected probings into the...
[The entire page is 1529 words long]
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