“Brodsky, born in Leningrad, left school at age 15 and worked at many occupations, including a milling machine operator and a geologist-prospector. He began writing poetry at age 18 and studied with Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. After Brodsky was exiled in 1972, he came to the United States. He wrote nine volumes of poetry, including the 1980 acclaimed collection A Part of Speech. His 1986 collection of essays, Less Than One, won the National Book Critic’s Award for criticism. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987.”

–Library of Congress Poets Laureate page

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