Rivering

by Dean Kostos

Very few of these poems come to us with the demands of a determined art; rather, as in the first poems of Cavafy, the grace of Dean Kostos’s texts (I would call it unconscious grace, for that is the adjective which permits all heaven as much as all hell to explode, to let fly) is the result of another effort, not even the effort to please, but merely—merely!—the will to tell the truth, to tell what happened, what didn’t … It is another version of art to which the poet trusts himself, call it the grace of nature which invites the reader to return, to read again until he has made the poem an experience of his own. That is what happens here, the reader returns until he owns the poems. Or do the poems own him? Richard Howard

150 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2012

Reviews

[Dean Kostos · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Very few of these poems come to us with the demands of a determined art; rather, as in the first poems of Cavafy, the grace of Dean Kostos’s texts (I would call it unconscious grace, for that is the adjective which permits all heaven as much as all hell to explode, to let fly) is the result of another effort, not even the effort to please, but merely—merely!—the will to tell the truth, to tell what happened, what didn’t … It is another version of art to which the poet trusts himself, call it the grace of nature which invites the reader to return, to read again until he has made the poem an experience of his own. That is what happens here, the reader returns until he owns the poems. Or do the poems own him?”

—Richard Howard, Pulitzer-prize-winning poet/translator

“To his own medium, poetry, Dean Kostos applies his art teacher’s advice: “... draw in the
mystery, press down harder - / let darkness draw all the elements together.” An impassioned observer who sees beneath the surface to subterranean rivers, Kostos is attentive to the confluence of dark forces. Yet his richly rendered poems also offer burnished and evocative depictions of our world as encapsulated in art. Both in its themes and in the controlled lushness of its style, Rivering presents a feast of figuration.”

—Rachel Hadas, author of The Ache of Appetite

“Like latter-day sarcophagi, Dean Kostos’s keenly musical poems do justice to absent spirits and fugitive intuitions. In each line’s precise intonation, and in each stanza’s decisive shape, I hear the poet’s entranced attentiveness to the weight and luminousness of syllable. Kostos displays a laudable plurality of influences and inspirations; reading this artfully constructed book, I happily identified with his hunger for the mutable, the emblematic, the unattainable.”
—Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films

“This is a book to be savored; each poem is a complete experience. Kostos’s work is fully formed, gorgeous, velvet and shattered glass, a kind of hymn to the universe. He traverses from the personal to the religious, to Ekphrasis, to the myths of the Greeks, Hindus, Egyptians, Romans, to his own myths and demons. An almost terrifying onslaught of language (his verbs are amazing), in carefully controlled forms. Rivering is a feat of language and beauty, keen psychological insight, great craft, and a dizzying complex of ideas and feelings.”
—Veronica Golos, author of Vocabulary of Silence

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

These imagistic, sometimes fragmented, lyric poems capture Kostos's training as a visual artist. His use of line and page, of myth and memory, make this book a keeper.

[Michael Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derek Walcott said that “the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History.” Kostos’ poems don’t only attempt this but prove its necessity. Rivering teases out the insights that reclaim a denied identity from the silence of history in a poetry that is beautiful, even incantatory. This is the kind of collection that only emerges when the right intelligence hits upon the right theme, the perfect marriage of sensibility and subject.

This is a quote from my review of Rivering, which appeared in Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. The entire review can be read here: http://www.taosjournalofpoetry.com/ri... .