IRS PENS A FEW LINES TO US POET LAUREATE
Author: By Jeff Donn, Associated Press
Date: Sunday, July 7, 1991
Page: 40
Section: METRO
SOUTH HADLEY -- Poets toil in obscurity, at least in America. How would
the IRS know that the Joseph Brodsky it was trying to reach for weeks was this
nation's poet laureate and a former Soviet dissident?
Anyway, Brodsky, Trotsky, or Tchaikovsky -- it's all the same to the
Internal Revenue Service, which will not say why it has been looking for the
poet.
"We follow procedures with everyone," said Marti Melecio, spokeswoman for
the IRS' Massachusetts operation. "We treat everybody the same way."
Melecio spoke in a phone interview Friday after the Union-News of
Springfield carried a story saying the IRS had sent letters to Brodsky's South
Hadley neighbors asking if they know his whereabouts.
Brodsky, who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in literature, was named in May as
the new poet laureate at the Library of Congress. The position was created by
Congress in 1985.
The 51-year-old Brodsky, a native of Leningrad, served 18 months in a
Soviet labor camp after the government denounced his poetry as "decadent." He
was stripped of his citizenship and forced to emigrate in 1972.
Now a US citizen, Brodsky teaches literature at Mount Holyoke College in
South Hadley.
The IRS spokeswoman said confidentiality laws prevented her from saying
why her agency wants to talk to Brodsky. She said he may have failed to file
his income tax forms, underpaid or even overpaid.
She said that under IRS procedures, staffers would probably have tried to
call and write Brodsky before sending any letters to neighbors. She would not
say how many letters were sent. She did say that one letter to a neighbor was
dated June 23.
Brodsky, however, left for London on June 17 to spend the summer giving
poetry readings and taking part in conferences, according to his part-time
secretary. She said the IRS had not been in touch with the poet.
"I definitely know he doesn't know this," said Ann Kjellberg, who spoke
from the Manhattan offices of the New York Review of Books. "It's very
unpleasant."
Beside moonlighting for Brodsky, Kjellberg works on the editorial staff of
the review, which has published Brodsky's writings.
Asked if Brodsky might have forgotten to file his taxes, she said: "I
really don't know. He's a very disorganized, creative type of guy, so it is
conceivable. . . . He just doesn't keep good records."
However, she added: "He has an accountant who takes care of this stuff."
She declined to provide a contact number for Brodsky or to identify his
accountant. She said she was surprised the IRS had failed to contact her.
In Brodsky's neighborhood Friday, the name of the famous poet definitely
rang some bells.
"That's that Russian -- whatever -- poet," said one neighbor who declined
to give her name. "Of course I know who he is. I've read his poetry."
There was no sign of life at Brodsky's home that afternoon, just a box
full of mail.
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