Quotes by Brodsky, Joseph

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading >>

After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if >>

How delightful to find a friend in everyone. >>

Quotations about Poetry and Poets

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet >>

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood >>

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself. >>

In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself --as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony --those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a read, commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself.

Brodsky, Joseph