The Brink

by Peter Sears

Book Overview

Winner of the 1999 Peregrine Smith Poetry Competition. Voice Poems. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879059249
• ISBN13: 9780879059248
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publishers
• Length: 67 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Riveting

Seemingly conversational, but with an agility to turn on a dime, Sears pops up with one surprising image after another, jolting you suddenly out of the everyday into a brief glimpse of profundity, and then continuing merrily along as though nothing had happened. This book is a rewarding ride with a driver who commands the road despite taking a number of hair-raising turns that would put a lesser-skilled wheelman into the ditch. The opening section which is told in an "old voice" is especially riveting. Brilliant stuff.

A Remarkable Accomplishment

In "The Brink," Peter Sears offers us a different view of ourselves, our aspirations, and our foibles as human beings. In comfortably accessible language, one poem might make you laugh, another might run a chill right through you, and a third may demand both reactions at once. Each poem is wonderfully surprising and stands on its own, but also, in context, offers illumination to its neighbors.Mr. Sears is a fine poet. His observations are rendered in a voice that is playful, powerful, and dark, all at the same time. He skillfully wields our language as a caress, a cudgel, a razor, and a lance."The Brink" is a remarkable accomplishment.

Read this book: you'll be delighted!

Read this book even if after high school you swore you'd never read a line of poetry again. Each poem in THE BRINK will remind you of what poetry should really be about: the moving, funny, enraging, seductive, delightful, frustrating, humble, bizarre, lonely, love-filled moments of life. Sears' seamless and tight poems (filled with music, cadence and wonderful vernacular) span over a vast range of subject matter, and a vast range of emotions. You'll laugh, gasp, be surprised and moved. You'll be amazed at the universality of Sears' work. This is a poet of open, honest, intelligent and witty generosity, and when you close this book, you'll immediately want to read it again. I loved the monologues of the very old,the tender love poems, the very funny poem about a clumsy, loud male revisiting his old pals in a bar, the poem about dead people revisiting their village, about shoveling snow while it's still snowing; being stuck in a traffic jam, or about identifying with an old and lonely white bear in a zoo. And much, much more. This book won the Peregrine Smith Prize, and should win many more. It certainly won the best poetry book of the year for me.