On Grief and Reason: Essays

by Joseph Brodsky

Book Overview

Joseph Brodsky was a great contrarian and believed, against the received wisdom of our day, that good writing could survive translation. He was right, I think, though you had to wonder when you saw how badly his own work fared in English. But then perhaps the Russians hadn't expelled a great poet so much as exposed us to one of their virulent personality cults. Yet Brodsky's essays are interesting. Composed in a rather heroically determined English,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374525099
• ISBN13: 9780374525095
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 504 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

On Grief and Reason: An essential book difficult to find at a reasonable price.

I haven't read this yet, only quotes. I have read poetry by Brodsky, and have also yet to read "Runaway Soul." This is an essential part of my education, and I was so happy to find it and I anticipate reading it with joy.

Brodsky on Frost

I do not know whether I will be able to read the pieces in On Grief and Reason. I had read the title essay, which says that Frost is rough and goes through his "Home Burial," in the New Yorker, I think, and saved it, and it had deteriorated. I bought the book for the essay. It is that important, Brodsky is that important. It is the best single reading of a Frost poem that I have ever seen, but good-better-bests is not the issue. It is full of assumptions that everyone should have about what poetry is. It is how to read poetry. Stuart Filler