Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad in the Soviet Union, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.
Brodsky in 1988
Muruzi House, Saint Petersburg, where its Brodsky memorial plaque is visible in the middle of the ground floor of the brown building
Plaque marking where Brodsky stayed in Vilnius
The suitcase with which Brodsky left his homeland, on 4 June 1972, carrying a typewriter, two bottles of vodka, and a collection of poems by John Donne - today displayed in the Anna Akhmatova Museum, Saint Petersburg
Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes, such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".
Auden in 1939
Auden's birthplace in York
Auden's School at Hindhead in Surrey
Christopher Isherwood (left) and W. H. Auden (right) photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 6 February 1939
