Publications
Cover of 'Bird In The Hand'

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
108 pages,
$14
Available for purchase at www.mainstreetrag.com.


Cover of 'Bird In The Hand'

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
27 pages
Send a check for $8 for each book,
plus $2 for shipping & handling for each order to:
Grayson Books
PO Box 270549
West Hartford, CT 06127

Bird In the Hand is also available for the blind through www.bookshare.org.
~ Click for more information about www.bookshare.org.


Cover of 'Dusk Outside The Braille Press'

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
39 pages
Send a check for $5 for each book,
plus $2 for shipping & handling for each order to:
Riverstone, A Press for Poetry
PO Box 1421
Carefree, AZ 85377

Dusk Outside The Braille Press is also available for the blind through www.bookshare.org.
~ Click for more information about www.bookshare.org.


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
28 pages
The Frank Cat Press
1008 Ouray Ave.,
Grand Junction, CO 81501


Cover of 'Sonnets From South Mountain'

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.

48 pages, with illustrations
Send a check for $10 for each book,
plus $2 for shipping & handling to:
Paul Hostovsky
PO Box 272
Medfield, MA 02052


Masthead image: "The Cathedral" by Auguste Rodin.
Copyright January 2007, Paul Hostovsky - All rights reserved. Website design, Meredith Andrews.