SOURCE: "A Ramble on Joseph Brodsky," in Salmagundi, No. 97, Winter, 1993, pp. 152-68.

In the essay below, Whedon contrasts Brodsky's poetry and essays, finding his verse obscure and emotionally distant in comparison to his essays, in which he finds "a sensitivity and introspection, a humaneness."

I stop at a little diner outside the college where I teach and watch Joseph Brodsky lunch on a sausage sandwich and a beer. The Russian poet is convivial, and grows suddenly animated when we chat about C. P. Cavafy, the subject of Brodsky's essay, "The Pendulum's Swing." He complains of the poor English and French translations of the Greek poet. Brodsky is at work on a Russian translation of Cavafy who, like Brodsky, was most at home in an alien culture (Cavafy lived in Alexandria, Egypt all his life, writing poems that celebrate as much as they mourn his permanent exile). Like Brodsky...