Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.
From Joseph Brodsky
The unbearableness of the future is easier to face than that of the present if only because human foresight is much more destructive than anything that the future can bring about.
Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.
The mechanics of love imply some sort of bridge between the sensual and the spiritual, sometimes to the point of deification; the notion of an afterlife is implicit not only in our couplings, but also in our separations.
Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
The imprisoning of a writer is the same as the burning of a book.
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
17 perspectives
12 perspectives
9 perspectives
7 perspectives
6 perspectives
2 perspectives