All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend.
—Joseph Brodsky
Conversation
Actually Auden's line, no? But Brodsky was wonderful and so was his cat (named Mississippi, I think).
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You're probably right. I think it's from Auden's Fall of Rome, but Brodsky used the line in his Paris Review interview. My bad.
"Fall of Rome" has my favorite ending ever: "Altogether elsewhere vast / Herds of reindeer move across / Miles and miles of golden moss / Silently and very fast." Magical!
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I should have added that I was told to memorize that poem by none other than Joseph Brodsky, when I took his Lyric Poetry seminar at Columbia many moons ago.

