The Complete Poems of Louis Daniel Brodsky: Volume One, 1963-1967
About this ebook
These pieces serve not only as a measure of Brodsky's evolution as a poet but as a human being, chronicling one man's struggle to find his purpose in life, to make a place for himself in a society often at odds with his own convictions. His hopes, fears, and frustrations permeate the work, revealing the intense inner conflicts he felt compelled to set to paper, from individual matters -- his indecision over vocational goals, his candid experiences with love and rejection, the overwhelming isolation inherent in his academic pursuits -- to more global concerns, especially his acute awareness of the increasing social and political turbulence surrounding him.
By grappling with these issues in his writing, he explored passionate emotions, released tension, and, at times, resolved doubts evoked through his introspection. But more important, he used this outpouring to hone his creative skills and develop his personal and professional identity, ultimately creating this tangible record of his travail and his ecstasy, his certitude and his confusion, and, finally, his journey into the heart of the person he would never stop becoming -- a poet.
About the author
Louis Daniel Brodsky (L.D. Brodsky) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1941, where he attended St. Louis Country Day School. After earning a B.A., magna cum laude, at Yale University in 1963, he received an M.A. in English from Washington University in 1967 and an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University the following year.
From 1968 to 1987, while continuing to write poetry, he assisted in managing a 350-person men's-clothing factory in Farmington, Missouri, and started one of the Midwest's first factory-outlet apparel chains. From 1980 to 1991, he taught English and creative writing, part-time, at Mineral Area Junior College, in nearby Flat River. Since 1987, he has lived in St. Louis and devoted himself to composing poems. He has a daughter and a son.
Brodsky is the author of eighty-two volumes of poetry (five of which have been published in French by Éditions Gallimard) and twenty-five volumes of prose, including nine books of scholarship on William Faulkner and nine books of short fictions. His poems and essays have appeared in Harper's, Faulkner Journal, Southern Review, Texas Quarterly, National Forum, American Scholar, Studies in Bibliography, Kansas Quarterly, Forum, Cimarron Review, and Literary Review, as well as in Ariel, Acumen, Orbis, New Welsh Review, Dalhousie Review,and other journals. His work has also been printed in five editions of the Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry.
