On Grief and Reason

Book excerpt: "On Grief and Reason c"ollects the essays Joseph Brodsky wrote between his reception of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and his death in January 1996. The volume includes his Nobel lecture; essays on the condition of exile, the nature of history, the art of reading, and the notion of the poet as an inveterate DonGiovanni; his "Immodest Proposal" for the future of poetry, written when he was serving as Poet Laureate of the United States; a consideration of the poetry of Robert Frost; Brodsky's searching estimations of Hardy, Horace, and Rilke; and an affecting memoir of Stephen Spender.