Publications
Pitching for the Apostates
"Paul Hostovsky is our heartfelt story-teller poet, our risible raconteur of daily life, our faithful chronicler of 'So what happened next?' In this his thirteenth book of poetry, the overwhelming sense is of a poet in love with memory, and a poet in love with language, who keeps finding new ways of taking us with him by the hand and leading us back, putting us under the spell of his own personal Mnemosyne."
—Carl M. Jenks, Poetry Corner
Mostly
"Mostly is exquisite storytelling by a first-rate raconteur, a book rich with poems that are funny, charming, and wise. Paul Hostovsky is so clever, so humorous--the reading is purest pleasure--that one must look again to savor and enjoy the formal delights of these well-wrought poems. Mostly is a wonderful book to read, and then read again."
—Richard Jones, Poetry East
"No subject is too small or too large for Paul Hostovsky. Nose hairs, library fines and harmonicas sit comfortably beside God, cancer and the afterlife. There’s an unfriendly universe inside many of these poems, but somehow Hostovsky makes all the scary stuff entertaining--and often humorous--mostly because he loves the sounds of words, especially “the grouchy words,” unapologetically carrying his snarky, irascible, inimitable self into the world of flirty barbers, ejaculating junipers, and (mis)pronouncements of death, where he wails and keens for all of us."
—Michael Simms, Vox Populi
"You’d think Paul Hostovsky was a nice boy since Santa puts so many presents under his poetry. There’s a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Anthologies, and nine appearances on Verse Daily. If that doesn’t put some Norman in your Rockwell, Garrison Keillor has read twenty-five of Paul’s poems on The Writer’’s Almanac. But check out any one of his dozen collections and you’ll see what a rascal he is deep down, which is so why we love this Boston picaro."
—Barrett Warner, Free State Review
DEAF & BLIND
"To read Paul Hostovsky... is to stumble upon something rare and wonderful. Hearing poets have been patronizing Deaf people and romanticizing silence since before the Elizabethan Age. In fact, [they] have indulged in sentimentality so often... that the English language itself poses an almost physical barrier against anyone attempting to write honestly about Deaf people and sign language. Hostovsky’s work is a study in shifting approaches; poems that are entertaining lessons (“Deaf Culture 101”), philosophical (“Poem in Sign Language”), personal (“Deaf Ex”) and portraits that are also parables (“Dracula’s Rat”). There is a wonderful honesty and freshness to his work."
—John Lee Clark
"This book is a wonder closet packed with heritage, anthropology, schoolhouse rhymes and sly jokes. I can think of no other work, and no other writer, that examines so personally the splendid, sometimes spooky art of sign language, particularly within the traffic of interpretation. Paul Hostovsky's paradoxically courageous and vulnerable voice narrates a journey of self discovery housed in the form of a love letter to the cultures of the Deaf and the DeafBlind. These poems and stories brim with humor and sadness, wisdom and wisecracks, taking shortcuts into brilliance, left turns into something luminous."
—Frank Gallimore
"Catholically good, witty writing that is deceptively simple... like diving into a clear pool to touch bottom only to realize it’s deeper than it looks. And if you know ASL, it’s a bonus because you’ll enjoy finding Hostovsky’s little half-hidden language Easter eggs: the finger-flicked how-awfuls, the hey-waves and dinosaur-nods, the bent-V jaw-dropping astonishments."
—Willy Conley
Late for the Gratitude Meeting
"In the end of days what you need is a good first line”––like that one, and the first lines in so many of these exuberant, confident poems in Paul Hostovsky’s tenth collection. It is tempting to quote many great lines from these poems, but they deserve to be discovered in the contexts of their own fine explorations, as Hostovsky’s ideas can turn on a dime, revealing perfect surprises. He both exhorts us not to miss the small miracles in our often quotidian lives and introduces us to lives most of us do not know well, such as his extraordinary insights gleaned from work as a sign language interpreter. In the end, here we are, “just standing here all alone like a verb/ of being," eager to see where this terrific mind will take us next.
—Steve Straight, author of The Almanac (Curbstone/Northwestern)
A Paul Hostovsky poem has a way of welcoming you in, swinging the door wide open andmaking you comfortable, ready for anything. There will be surprises, some poems turning you gently one way and then another, others “bungee jumping boing-boing off the walls and ceiling... leaping singing windmilling right out the door.” Poets don’t have agents. But if I were an agent I’d represent Paul Hostovsky’s poems and sell the movie rights.
—Sally Fisher, author of Good Question (Bright Hill Press)
Paul Hostovsky’s amiable voice, wry humor, and snappy wordplay are on full display in this new collection. But the humor and verbal gymnastics serve a larger purpose: poem after poem shows us that even the smallest events of everyday life are both (and often simultaneously) wondrous and absurd, beautiful and ugly, simple and complex. Above all, the poems remind us that life is a wide-angle “spectacular view” to be grateful for. And as the title poem vividly illustrates, it is never too late for gratitude, no matter how difficult or delayed it may be. When you read this book, you’ll be grateful for it, immediately.
—Eric Nelson, author of Some Wonder (Gival Press)
Read three poems from Late for the Gratitude Meeting.
ISBN: 9781949229905
> Buy the book on Amazon.com.
Is That What That Is
In his ninth full-length collection, Paul Hostovsky serves up his usual unusual fare of graceful, musical, accessible language sauced with humor and tenderness in poems about love and sex, exes and whys, lost socks, lost erections, lost youth, deaf people and dentists and kazoos—with lots of ars poeticas sprinkled throughout and a philosophical lagomorph hopping into more than a couple of poems. These poems consistently extract from the everyday and ordinary experiences of our lives a kind of Holy Instant of joy, of insight, of wonder, and a sort of redemptive humor that leaves us somehow sadder and wiser AND happier the morrow morn. George Bilgere says of this new collection: "Such a pleasure. These poems knocked my socks off. Those other reliable reporters from the battlefield of being middle-aged in America—the Hoaglands and Hallidays, the Collinses and Padgetts—should step aside and make way for Hostovsky!"
Read three poems from Is That What That Is.
ISBN: 9781942371328
> Buy the book on Amazon.com.
The Bad Guys (Winner of the 2015 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize)
Who are the bad guys, anyway? Which one is the good fight, anyway? In Paul Hostovsky’s eighth book of poetry, The Bad Guys, there are poems about suicide bombers and high school bullies, capricious exes and ecstatic bums, fastidious drug-dealers and contemplative alcoholics, evil stenches and spiritual moms; poems about the Republicans, the mega-hospitals, the brusque and bearded anesthesiologists, and the lady who gave out pencils on Halloween. Plus a host of other unlikely, often likable, always loveable, candidates. These poems are by turns funny and poignant, formal and free verse, a villanelle here, a pantoum there, and lots of loosey-goosey sonnets peppered throughout.
Read three poems from The Bad Guys
ISBN-10: 1938853776
Published by FutureCycle Press (April 29, 2015)
Buy the book on Amazon.com.
Available on the Kindle.
Paul Hostovsky: Selected Poems
Paul Hostovsky: Selected Poems brings together 120 poems from this prolific, masterful, Pushcart Prize-winning poet’s previous five collections of poetry, Bending the Notes (2008), Dear Truth (2009), A Little in Love a Lot (2011), Hurt Into Beauty (2012), and Naming Names (2014). Of Hostovsky’s work the Georgia Review has written: “High-energy Paul Hostovsky, who makes his living as an interpreter for the Deaf, has been making a lot of noise in the poetry publishing world of late, with five full-length collections and six poetry chapbooks in the past eight years. He is best known for his use of humor in service of serious subject matter, his skill with narrative, and his unpretentiously strong commitment to craft. Joe Weil has written that ‘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.’ And Jeffrey Harrison, speaking of Hostovsky’s work, has said more succinctly, ‘This book kicks ass.’”
ISBN-10: 1938853571
Published by FutureCycle Press
Buy the book on Amazon.com.
Available on the Kindle.
naming names
"Naming Names is proof positive that Paul Hostovsky just keeps getting better. Here again the acute, bemused, loving attention to the idiosyncracies of our polysaturated world. Here the New Jersian candor. The delight in language—"that predacious lefty sidearm pitcher with / strabismus, and a penchant for wild pitches" . . . "the sensation always a bit hairy— / as the word seeps down into your vocabulary" . . . "powering the buoyant / antique iridescent technology of the poem." Here again—in spades—the enlarged, Whitmanian heart." —Nick Norwood
"This book feels like a staring contest between the profound and the promiscuous. It goes back and forth but overall the profound wins out, in part because it's performing some very clever jiu-jitsu. These poems spiritualize the bodily functions. They are devoted to the body in all its juices. Hostovsky's voice argues well for its humanity, with just enough cleverness, introspection, and self-awareness to balance out all the negative capability wanking in the loo." —Frank Gallimore
"In poems funny and wise, playful and sad, carnal and spiritual, locker-room casual and master-class artful, Paul Hostovsky names friends, enemies, writers, lovers, gentleman plumbers, and many others. In the process, he names the paradoxes and complexities that define us all. These poems “smile at you through the pain,” and you smile back in painful recognition. This book—maybe Hostovsky’s best yet—not only names names, it kicks ass." —Eric Nelson
Read 3 poems from Naming Names.
Hurt Into Beauty
"In his fourth full-length collection of poetry, Paul Hostovsky offers up the kind of fare that his readers keep coming back for--the humor mixed with poignancy, the heartbreak lined with a kind of palliative existential mischief--in poems that explore the nature of pain, illness, beauty, childhood, Deaf people and sign language, the art of love and the art of poetry." —FutureCycle Press
Read 3 poems from Hurt Into Beauty.
ISBN-10: 0983998590
Published by FutureCycle Press, 62 pages
Available for purchase on Amazon.com.
A Little in Love a Lot
"I can hardly tell you how much I love these poems. And then there is the fact that they are good. Really, really good. There is no one that I know of writing poetry right now that is doing it better than this. If you can't afford to buy this book, read it in the store." —Sally Fisher
"This book is full of Hostovsky poems, which is to say it's full of rare, wonderful, funny, incandescent events. No other contemporary American poet is so readily recognizable in just the first few lines of any of his poems, and very few are as entertaining." —John Lee Clark
"Paul Hostovsky always finds a way to make me happy. I hope in the next life I come back as him." —Scott Owens
Read 3 poems from A Little In Love A Lot.
ISBN: 978-1-59948-303-0
Published by Main Street Rag, 96 pages
Available for purchase from the publisher or the author. Email Paul for details.
Dear Truth
"Paul Hostovsky has the storyteller’s
gift for character and voice. He has the lyricist’s
gift for 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
ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-209-5
Published by Main Street Rag, 95 pages
Available for purchase from the publisher or 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 from Bending the Notes.
ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-153-1
Published by Main Street Rag, 105 pages
Available for purchase from the publisher or 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 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 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 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 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 from Sonnets From South Mountain.
Published by Stanley Poetry Press, 48 pages (with illustrations)
Available for purchase from the author. Email Paul for details.