Watermark

In this brief, intense, gemlike book, equal parts extended autobiographical essay and prose poem, Joseph Brodsky turns his eye to the seductive and enigmatic city of Venice. A mosaic of forty-eight short chapters—each recalling a specific episode from one of his many visits there (Brodsky spent his winters in Venice for nearly twenty years)—Watermark associatively and brilliantly evokes one city's architectural and atmospheric character.

Brodsky writes in Watermark that water “stores our re...