(Washington, DC): Inter-Language Literary Associates 1965. First edition of Brodsky’s unauthorized first book, “pulled together from unauthorized samizdat copies”, which “consisted of very early poems, most of them written before 1962.” Brodsky “never acknowledged the book as his.” – Lev Loseff, Joseph Brodsky. A Literary Life. (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 122. George Kline, who edited Brodsky’s Selected Poems in 1973, recalled Brodsky’s mixed feelings upon seeing the book: “it was disappointing to see how much juvenilia there was in the book. He was also annoyed by numerous typographical errors and certain mistakes, although he undoubtedly understood that it would have been impossible to publish a decent edition without any contact with the author . . . He quickly typed out a list of twenty-six poems written between 1957 and 1961 that he did not want to include in the new collection [Ostanovka v pustyne]. Twenty-two of these twenty-six had found their way into Poems.” – Loseff, p. 125. Prior to this book, Brodsky’s verse was circulated only in fugitive samizdat form in the Soviet Union. Holtzman & Bigelow II, 1. Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940, and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972. Between 1972 and his death in 1996, Brodsky won the National Book Critics Circle Award, a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and was named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1992. In 1987, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Irish poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney eulogized his friend in these terms: “He was a verifying presence. His mixture of brilliance and sweetness, of the highest standards and the most refreshing common sense, never failed to be both fortifying and endearing. Every encounter with him constituted a renewal of belief in the possibilities of poetry.”. 8vo, original printed wrappers. Spine lightly sunned, with some light marginal soiling, otherwise a very good copy.