‘I wish you luck, because what lies ahead is no picnic for the prepared and the unprepared alike, and you’ll need luck’ 

Russian-American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky delivered the 1988 winter commencement speech to the graduating students on December 18, 1988. Joseph Brodsky was a Soviet dissident and poet who won the Nobel Prize for literature the year before this speech. He was an American poet laureate in 1991. He died in 1996.

Joseph Brodsky’s University of Michigan 1988 Commencement Speech Transcript