Russian poet first past the post

The US Postal Service will pay tribute to one of the greatest Russian poets of all time, Nobel-prize winner Joseph Brodsky, whose image will be featured on the 10 “Twentieth Century Poets” series of stamps in 2012.

­Russian-born Brodsky was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and lived in America until his death in New York in 1996 from a heart attack.

His genius mind saw him become the first foreign-born poet to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.

Along with Brodsky’s photograph, taken in New York City by Nancy Crampton, the poet’s stamp will include an excerpt from one of his poems featured on the pane, Odysseus to Telemachus.

My dear Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is over now; I don’t recall who won it.
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland.

Apart from Brodsky, such outstanding American poets as Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, to name but a few, will be commemorated in the “Twentieth Century Poets” postal series.

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