Product Description

Entrant for the Pulitzer Prize in Letters, 2009, Best New American Poet, 2007: Pastore owes all he has, and has ever had, to a saving engagement with his art. What I particularly admire is the gamble he takes, and wins, with those classic stylized poems. In less accomplished hands they might have been distractingly archaic, but here, defused by the beautifully plain and heartfelt thanks for everything into which they flow, they connect back to the great tradition from which Pastore has drawn strength not just artistically but personally, one feels throughout one of the more impressively and, I might say, spectacularly, composed first poetry collections in contemporary American poetry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6129025 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Review
Brink of the World is a collection of poems that will add light to the literature of the 21st century. --Bennet C. Hazky: Torso Pat

Brink of the World is a collection of poems that will add light to the literature of the 21st century. I'll write a book just like it one day called: My Wind Blows Hard. --R. G. Umbert

I almost finished a poem once but if I could have, it would be like one of Steve's. He shows, he tells, he does it all. --Bennet C. Hazky

About the Author
Stephen R. Pastore won the Aldous Huxley Prize, 2007, for his novel, Never on These Shores. His novel, Alone in Eden was short-listed for the Clarendon Prize and Nominated for the European Critics Circle Novel of the Year, 2007. His play, Coming Back from Lyonnesse was successfully produced in Great Britain. He is the author of six bibliographical studies of American and British authors. This is his first book of poetry. Gregory Corso is his first cousin. Gregory Corso (1930-2001) was one of the outstanding poets of the Twentieth Century having published numerous works as one of the icons of the Beat Generation.

Customer Reviews

Don't judge this book by its cover.
I have a very serious bone to pick with this book's packaging, which I found deceitful and unethical. Publishers take note: package your products honestly, or you'll risk souring readers and reviewers' judgments as much as mine was soured here.

Let me backtrack a bit. I approached Brink of the World with much enthusiasm, noting it had been published by Harvard Press; the copy I received bore a silver sunburst sticker naming Stephen R. Pastore Poetry Review's Best New American Poet of 2007. Harvard and Poetry Review--how could I go wrong? Or so I thought, till an older, warier friend pointed out a teeny-weeny distinction between Harvard Press and Harvard University Press, the former apparently not our kind, dear, in the Ivy League.

Anyway, my skepticism gene had now kicked in. I tried in vain to find the Poetry Review award online, frustrated by there being so many revues (the most famous published by the Poetry Society in England) with very similar names. So, I thought to myself, someone who won a major poetry prize for 2007 has to appear in Wikipedia. Sure enough, there was a "Stephen R. Pastore" entry (now deleted by Wikipedia)--transparently penned by Pastore himself or a droolingly doe-eyed fan. Wikipedia's editors, who drool instead over verifiability--and who, like me, lost the slim needle of Pastore's prize in the haystack of impressively named journals--eventually purged the Poetry Review claim from the article.

The editorial reviews on Brink of the World's back cover are also revealing--of connoisseur taste in prestigious names and minimalist concern for ethics. If the distinguished Poetry Review really gave Pastore this exalted praise (like his award), their Web site seems very coy about acknowledging his existence. The much-lamented Saturday Review (not to be confused with the one now, suspiciously, on the Web) had no chance to be coy, having folded its tent in 1986. Not being a lawyer, I don't know if the legal "f-word" applies here, but ethically I feel victim of an "f-word" Amazon guidelines won't let me use.

But I digress from the book--which is exactly my point. Had Pastore refrained from his "name game" with literary awards, revues, and presses (Harvard Press is clearly a vanity house, "not that there's anything wrong with it"), and had his publisher checked his bona fides before pasting stickers, this review would be mainly about the book, which isn't all that bad. And one would be less inclined to doubt that the book's intro was written by Beat poetry legend Gregory Corso, or that Corso really was Pastore's cousin. (For me, the jury's out, but Wikipedia's pretty skeptical.) As for Pastore, I'm a fan of older, less prosy poetry, but I find his work competent modern verse, and generally better than the Beats (of whom I'm no great fan). Definitely not Pulitzer Prize (or even Best New Poet of 2007) stuff, but good enough to have earned another star or two--had I not felt "conned" by the ethically challenged packaging. Honest reviewers should withhold stars to punish deceitful hype. We hate watching innocent readers buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

Imaginative and profound
I purchased this book because I adored Pastore's ALONE IN EDEN (which I considerate a modern masterpiece). I'm not crazy about the author's cousin G. Corso, but I've developed an interest in him because of Pastore--who I think is far better, if not more famous. This is a book that anyone who loves good poetry should have. It's broad and simply profound in so many ways.