"Paul Celan said that attentiveness is the common prayer of the human soul. Focus, the noticing of things not usually noticed, is a kind of prayer. Hostovsky's poems strike me as kinds of (non-religious) prayers—of joy, of grief, of praise, of pain, of a blind man reading a braille book with it closed on his hand, but mostly prayers as a form of gratitude, a kind of thank you, thank you, Life! This really is a wonderful book."
—Thomas Lux
> Read three poems excerpted from Bending the Notes
Dear
Truth is close kin to Paul Hostovsky's
other work, but much here is concerned with
physical pain, its etiology and its indescribability,
its persistence in the psychic world too. But
humor is always standing at the abyss with this
poet--and enormous good will. Like Kunitz, he
is a master at revealing tenderness; like Gerald
Stern, his onrushing lines trap the reader in
a tidal pull...we run away with him to his alluring
difficult country of paradox, pain and irony--and
the unique existential mischief that relieves
it all.
—Suzanne
Berger
> Read three poems excerpted from Dear Truth
