Brodsky, Joseph Collection of poems. Typescript.

N.p., [ca 1960s?].
8vo, 38 leaves.

Stapled in a booklet. In handmade card boards. Text on rectos only.
In good condition, overall wear, corners bumped.

Samizdat collection of early poems.

This collection of Brodsky's samizdat includes 25 poems, showcasing his early works: ‘The Blind Wander in the Night’, ‘Monument’, ‘Memories’, ‘Roosters’, ‘And the Eternal Battle’, ‘Criteria’, ‘Gladiators’, ‘Artist’, ‘Loneliness’, ‘Fish in Winter’, ‘Glory’, ‘Lyrics’, ‘Sonnet to Gleb Gorbovsky’, ‘Memory Fedi Dobrowolski’, ‘Poems about Spaniard Miguel Servente, heretic, burnt Calvinists’, ‘It Comes in March. I serve anew’, ‘Little Ballad about a Piece of Bread’, ‘Book’, ‘Poetry Under the Motto’, ‘Determination of Poetry. In Memory of Federico Garcia Lorca’, ‘Description of the Morning’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Jewish Cemetery near Leningrad’, ‘Russia’, ‘Pilgrims’.
This collection closely adheres to another collection of Brodsky's poems compiled in May 1962 in Leningrad by Konstantyn Kuzminsky, a poet, dissident, and compiler of many samizdat books. It is known that the selected typescript sheets from Kuzminsky's collection were reviewed by Brodsky himself in August 1962. Subsequently, after the trial under Brodsky in 1964, the collection was sent by journalist, poet, and human rights activist Alexander Ginzburg to the United States. Finally, in 1965, Brodsky's first poetry book ‘Verses and Poems’ was released in New York while the poet was in exile. However, this typescript is closer to the initial collection than to the book. All of the above allows us to assume that the presented collection was printed in the early 1960s by individuals from the poet's inner circle.
The first book of Brodsky's poetry in the USSR only appeared in 1990. Before that, his verses circulated in samizdat (for example, in the collection of works prepared by Vladimir Maramzin in 1972-1974) or were published abroad.