Brodsky was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1941, where he attended St. Louis Country Day School. After earning a B.A., magna cum laude, at Yale University in 1963, he received an M.A. in English from Washington University in St. Louis in 1967 and an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University the following year.
From 1968 to 1987, while continuing to write poetry, he assisted in managing a 350-person men's clothing factory in Farmington, Missouri owned by his father's company, and assisted in starting one of the Midwest's first factory-outlet apparel chains, also owned by his father's company. From 1980 to 1991, he taught English and creative writing, part time, at Mineral Area Junior College, in nearby Flat River. Since 1987, he has lived in St. Louis and devoted himself to composing poems. He has a daughter, Trilogy, and a son, Troika.
Brodsky is the author of sixty-three volumes of poetry (five of which have been published in French by Éditions Gallimard) and twenty-four volumes of prose, including nine books of scholarship on William Faulkner and eight books of short fiction. His poems and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Faulkner Journal, The Southern Review, The American Scholar, Studies in Bibliography, and other journals. His work has also been printed in five editions of the annual Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry.
In 2004, Brodsky’s You Can't Go Back, Exactly won the award for best book of poetry, presented by The Center for Great Lakes Culture, at Michigan State University.
You can learn more about Louis Daniel Brodsky and read his most recent work by visiting his web site at: http://www.louisdanielbrodsky.com
(all published by Time Being Books, St. Louis, MO):
Five Facets of Myself (1967)* (1995)
The Easy Philosopher (1967)* (1995)
A Hard Coming of It and Other Poems (1967)* (1995)
The Foul Rag-and-Bone Shop (1967)* (1969, exp.)* (1995, exp.)
Points in Time (1971)* (1995) (1996)
Taking the Back Road Home (1972)* (1997) (2000)
Trip to Tipton and Other Compulsions (1973)* (1997)
The Talking Machine and Other Poems (1974)* (1997)
Tiffany Shade (1974)* (1997)
Trilogy: A Birth Cycle (1974) (1998)
Cold Companionable Streams (1975)* (1999)
Monday's Child (1975) (1998)
Preparing for Incarnations (1975)* (1976, exp.) (1999) (1999, exp.)
The Kingdom of Gewgaw (1976) (2000)
Point of Americas II (1976) (1998)
La Preciosa (1977) (2001)
Stranded in the Land of Transients (1978) (2000)
The Uncelebrated Ceremony of Pants-Factory Fatso (1978) (2001)
Birds in Passage (1980) (2001)
Résumé of a Scrapegoat (1980) (2001)
Mississippi Vistas: Volume One of A Mississippi Trilogy (1983) (1990)
You Can't Go Back, Exactly (1988, two eds.) (1989) (2003, exp.)
The Thorough Earth (1989)
Four and Twenty Blackbirds Soaring (1989)
Falling from Heaven: Holocaust Poems of a Jew and a Gentile (with William Heyen) (1991)
Forever, for Now: Poems for a Later Love (1991)
Mistress Mississippi: Volume Three of A Mississippi Trilogy (1992)
A Gleam in the Eye: Volume One of The Seasons of Youth (1992) (2009)
Gestapo Crows: Holocaust Poems (1992)
The Capital Café: Poems of Redneck, U.S.A. (1993)
Disappearing in Mississippi Latitudes: Volume Two of A Mississippi Trilogy (1994)
A Mississippi Trilogy: A Poetic Saga of the South (1995)*
Paper-Whites for Lady Jane: Poems of a Midlife Love Affair (1995)
The Complete Poems of Louis Daniel Brodsky: Volume One, 1963-1967 (edited by Sheri L. Vandermolen) (1996)
Three Early Books of Poems by Louis Daniel Brodsky, 1967-1969: The Easy Philosopher, A Hard Coming of It and Other Poems, and The Foul Rag-and-Bone Shop (edited by Sheri L. Vandermolen)(1997)
The Eleventh Lost Tribe: Poems of the Holocaust (1998)
Toward the Torah, Soaring: Poems of the Renascence of Faith (1998)
Voice Within the Void: Poems of Homo supinus (2000)
Rabbi Auschwitz: Poems Touching the Shoah (2000)* (2009)
The Swastika Clock: Endlösung Poems (2001)*
Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Volume One (2001) (2004)
The Complete Poems of Louis Daniel Brodsky: Volume Two, 1967-1976 (edited by Sheri L. Vandermolen) (2002)
Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Volume Two (2002) (2004)
Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Volume Three (2002) (2004)
Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Volume Four (2002) (2004)
Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Volume Five (2002) (2004)
Heavenward (2003)*
Regime Change: Poems of America's Showdown with Iraq, Volume One (2003)*
Regime Change: Poems of America's Showdown with Iraq, Volume Two (2003)*
Regime Change: Poems of America's Showdown with Iraq, Volume Three (2003)*
The Complete Poems of Louis Daniel Brodsky: Volume Three, 1976-1980 (edited by Sheri L. Vandermolen) (2005)
Peddler on the Road: Days in the Life of Willy Sypher (2005)
Combing Florida's Shores: Poems of Two Lifetimes (2006)
Showdown With a Cactus: Poems Chronicling the Prickly Struggle Between the Forces of Dubya-ness and Enlightenment, 2003-2006 (2006)
A Transcendental Almanac: Poems of Nature (2006)
Once upon a Small-Town Time: Poems of America's Heartland (2007)
Still Wandering in the Wilderness: Poems of the Jewish Diaspora (2007)
The Location of the Unknown: Shoah Poems (2008)*
The World Waiting to Be: Poems About the Creative Process (2008)
The Complete Poems of Louis Daniel Brodsky: Volume Four, 1981-1985 (edited by Sheri L. Vandermolen) (2008)
Dine-Rite: Breakfast Poems (2008)
Kamp: Poems of the Holocaust (2009)*
By Leaps and Bounds: Volume Two of The Seasons of Youth (2009)
At Water's Edge: Poems of Lake Nebagamon, Volume One (2010)
Bibliography
(coedited with Robert Hamblin)
Selections from the William Faulkner Collection of Louis Daniel Brodsky: A Descriptive Catalogue (1979)
Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, Volume I: The Biobibliography (1982)
Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, Volume II: The Letters (1984)
Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, Volume III: The De Gaulle Story (1984)
Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, Volume IV: Battle Cry (1985)
Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, Volume V: Manuscripts and Documents (1989)
Country Lawyer and Other Stories for the Screen by William Faulkner (1987)
Stallion Road: A Screenplay by William Faulkner (1989)
Biography
William Faulkner, Life Glimpses (1990)
Fiction
Between Grief and Nothing (novel) (1964)*
Between the Heron and the Wren (novel) (1965)*
Dink Phlager's Alligator and Other Stories (1966)*
The Drift of Things (novel) (1966)*
Vineyard's Toys (novel) (1967)*
The Bindle Stiffs (novel) (1968)*
Catchin' the Drift o' the Draft (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 1999)
This Here's a Merica (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 1999)
Yellow Bricks (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 1999)
Leaky Tubs (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 2001)
Nuts to You! (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 2004)
Rated Xmas (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 2004)
Pigskinizations (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 2005)
With One Foot in the Butterfly Farm (short fictions) (Time Being Books, 2009)
Memoir
The Adventures of the Night Riders, Better Known as the Terrible Trio (with Richard Milsten) (1961)*
