Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries combines biographical details about Joseph Brodsky with a collection of interviews that illuminate an intriguing contemporary phenomenon, along with a new and authoritative interpretation of the poetics, style, and ideas of one of the most influential poets to emerge in post-Stalinist Russia. Subtle, incisive, and rigorous in its critical evaluation, each discussion significantly advances our understanding of Brodsky’s complex poetic world. All discussions are linked by core questions that are carefully and sometimes provocatively formulated.
This book is a superb guide to further study of Brodsky’s work both for specialist scholars and general readers who are intoxicated by poetry.
Presented in two volumes, this is the second edition of a work first published in 1992; this edition is enlarged with new interviews and a series of previously unpublished unique photographs from the personal archives of the author and the interviewees.
Volume I offers a fascinating record of conversations with poets of various nationalities about Brodsky: Czeslaw Milosz, Roy Fisher, Lev Loseff, Bella Akhmadulina, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Tomas Venclova, Viktor Krivulin, Alexander Kushner, and Elena Shvarts.
Volume II features eye-witness accounts of Joseph Brodsky’s friends and family members, publishers, editors, translators, students, and fellow poets including John Le Carre, Oleg Tselkov, Petr Vail, Bengt Jangfeldt, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and others.

Translated by: Tatiana Retivov, Chris Jones, Daniel Weissbort