Welcome to poet Paul Hostovsky's website

	Dear Truth Paul Hostovsky has the storyteller’s gift for character and voice. He has the lyricist’s giftfor extracting the essential moment, holding it up like a crystal, and making it sing. He brings us into a world where beauty and pain reside together. From the shards of illness, addiction, and fractured love affairs, he meticulously crafts poems that are significant and durable. *—Diane Lockward* Although the title poem is a sort of Dear John letter to Truth, the book itself is, in fact, dedicated to truth on a larger scale: the expansive and various truth of the imagination. In these touching, finely crafted, and often funny poems, Hostovsky remains true to his lively and inquisitive vision of the world, to beauty, joy, pain, and grief, always displaying a love of language that is contagious and invigorating. *—Jeffrey Harrison* Read 3 poems excerpted from Dear Truth. ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-209-5 Published by Main Street Rag, 95 pages Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.
	Bending the Notes "This book kicks ass. 'Bear with me I/ want to tell you/ something about/ happiness,' the first poem begins, and that urgency never lets up as Hostovsky tells us not only about happiness but also about sadness, pain, tenderness, making love, making sandwiches, making poems, making mistakes, and trying to 'make it/ right.' How many poems have you read in which an extended basketball metaphor appears side by side with Rilke's notion of beauty and terror; or in which a lesbian rabbi and recovering alcoholic priest hilariously discuss the relationship between profanity and prayer; or in which the phrase 'the shiny, poisonous leaves/ of Beauty' refers not to the common, three-leaved rash-inducing plant but to the pages of People magazine?They're all here, along with many other wonderful poems that are by turns funny and poignant--or both at once. Equally adept with fixed or not-so-fixed forms as with free-wheeling free verse, Hostovsky shows us, over and over, in language that is always alive, what it is like to be alive." —*Jeffrey Harrison* Read three poems excerpted from Bending the Notes. ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-153-1 Published by Main Street Rag, 105 pages Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.
	Bird In The Hand "Paul Hostovsky’s poems send the reader in two directions: one road leads to the brain, the other to the heart. Intelligent and poignant, these poems reveal the poet’s narrative bent, lyric grace, and technical mastery, most notably, an uncanny knack for the double-duty line break. In poem after poem, Hostovsky moves with ease from the literal to the metaphorical. His fascination with deafness, hands, and signing compels us to think about how we listen or don’t listen, how we touch or fail to touch each other, and what language really means. Here’s a poet whose comfort zone is that squiggly spot where contradiction resides, where we find 'a certain / glamour of great sorrows, or beautiful / catastrophes.'” *—Diane Lockward* Read three poems excerpted from Bird In The Hand. ISBN: 0-9785382-0-X Published by Grayson Books, 27 pages Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.
	That Light "Paul Hostovsky negotiates a territory not far removed from the casual speaking style of Frank O'Hara, and the humor and simplicity of Paul Zimmer, but he is not a mere hybrid of these two fine poets. He represents what is best about clarity in poetry. He never overwrites, or tries to force his "lyrical" soul on a situation or perception, but lets the situation and perception offer up their own "poetic" moments. I found his writing to be both humorous and precise, yet free flowing--the triumph of a center fielder who has learned to make the hard catch look easy." —Joe Weil, Final Judge, Split Oak Press Chapbook Contest *Read three poems excerpted from That Light.* ISBN: 978-0-9823513-4-5 Published by Split Oak Press, 35 pages Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.
	Dusk Outside The Braille Press "Here are poems that take my imagination and heart in directions I do not expect, with language both accessible and rigorously crafted. With every visit among these poems, I step away from them moved with gratitude for how they enlarge my sense of the world I thought I knew." *—Brad Davis* Read three poems excerpted from Dusk Outside The Braille Press. ISBN: 3-978-890044-17-6 Published by Riverstone Press, 39 pages Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.
	The Best Lunches “This year’s winner is The Best Lunches by Paul Hostovsky of Medfield Massachusetts. This collection is humorous and touching, with a powerful and authentic voice. The poems make acute observations of daily life and explore them in a way that humanizes us all. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.” —The Frank Cat Press Chapbook Competition Read three poems excerpted from The Best Lunches. ISBN: 0-9789416-2-4 Published by Frank Cat Press, 28 pages Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.
	Sonnets From South Mountain "They are slyly sonnets, these delightfully pithy little narratives that have the relaxed quality of conversation, are always more formal than they appear, but without ever losing that improvisational effect. They shock with little explosions of insight, take unexpected turns that rivet the reader's attention. I read them straight through from cover to cover!" —Clifford Gordon Read three poems excerpted from Sonnets From South Mountain. Published by Stanley Poetry Press, 48 pages (with illustrations) Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.