A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet with Daria S. Smirnova (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a transnational poet derives paradoxically from an inward-looking stance that privileges “the trope of the room” and a practice of self-translation that is faithful to his own internal poetics rather than the poetic norms of the target tradition. The resulting bilingual poetics is one that, though not universally accepted by English readers, ultimately had a profound effect on the Anglo-American literary tradition and anticipated certain foreignizing tendencies that have become central to translation studies and theories of transnationalism. No less powerful than the book’s thesis is the elegant analyses, which encompass Brodsky’s Russian poetry, his translations from Russian to English, and his English-language essays.Daria Smirnova holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and a degree in Linguistics from Russia. Inspired by years of traveling between languages and cultures, her research explores literary translation, bilingualism, and transmediation. Daria's current archival research examines the role of translation in shaping literary canons.Amber Nickell is Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University, Editor at H-Ukraine, and Host at NBN Jewish Studies, Ukrainian Studies, and Eastern Europe. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.