Customer Reviews

Last Supper of the Senses

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In his second collection Kostos gives us another taste of his fine touch with language: always vibrant and never obscure. For me the most powerful piece in this new book is the long poem on the fate of the dauphin, the heir to the throne in the French Revolution. This poem captures all of the horror of the revolution as seen from the point of view of the little martyred boy. The book, divided as it is into sections devoted to each of the senses, invokes more types of imagery than one usually gets in a collection because Kostos has forced himself to titillate more than just the visual sense. This book is a wonderful read.

I am convinced that the poems of Dean Kostos are here to remind me "All things in miniature [are here] to love / for the grown things they might become" ("Magus"). In his stunning new collection of poems, LAST SUPPER OF THE SENSES, Kostos takes us on a rich journey of the senses as but one way to locate the vision that is both of, yet simultaneously beyond, the senses. The poet's sense of spiritual awe in the midst of the most mundane is invigorating--whether the speaker of these poems is examining "stacks of corduroy / pants" that "invite" his "touch" ("Touch") or watching "A man in a red coat [who] skims a punt / across a lake, flimsy as a mosquito" ("Corot's Red Fleck"). Nothing in Kostos's poetic world, however, is the least bit flimsy, from his muscular lines and imagery to his acute sense of seeing the solidity and strength of even the most seemingly miniscule observation that others with less vision might overlook. In "Spoken Under Hypnosis: An Earlier Life in Burma as a Woman Named Mi Aye," Kostos extends his visionary embrace of "simplicity" and shows how a series of simple moments, lived and rendered with depth and attentiveness, lead to an eternity of human and spiritual knowing. It is this sense of spiritual understanding within the confines of materiality that draws me most to the poems of Dean Kostos. The work feels lived, and the experience of tasting such a rich "supper of the senses" resembles anything but a "last supper"; it is more like tasting a new food we have never tried in quite this way but that we know has sustained us all along.

What can one say when one comes across phrases like "chiaroscuro machine" or "amphetamine star-paste"? Dean Kostos uses words the way a master chef uses herbs and spices: to tease, captivate and intoxicate our senses. With his poems, we abandon the simple act of reading to savor the utter deliciousness of language.

Dean Kostos is one of the most gifted poets of our time. His poems are well-crafted and full of gorgeous imagery and intense passion. He is a real wizard of words.

Davidson Garrett
New York City