Customer Reviews

The Sentence that Ends with a Comma : Poems

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Like the parade of faces on a stone frieze, this wordsmith carves out each poem with careful attention to detail and language. But the poet does not limit his literary space to his Greek ancestry, there are many cultures connecting here like that of the French surrealists, the Italian poetic forms and a list of American icons that contribute to a complex chorus of superb images. Challenging to read and pleasing to the ear.

In true Cavafyesque style, Kostos delves into his tormented psyche and exposes his heart-wrenching view of his fight for acceptance and battle with the demons that fate has released upon him in these biblical times. The reader is left with an admiration for this gentle soul and his genuine suffering and anger.

Each page contains worlds to explore and digest. Kostos uses concrete, even commonplace, objects and experiences to reveal what is timeless and unnameable. His imagery is strangely crisp yet evocative -- and totally devoid of pedantry and self-consciousness. A real delight to savor!

I have looked forward to a poetry book by Dean Kostos since I first read his poems in a poetry workshop. This is a book that opens up and feeds both the heart and mind. I am joyful that these poems exist.

I'm rarely excited by most unknown poets, but am amazed at Dean Kostos' originality and extraordinary voice, and his wealth of surreal yet lucidly accurate images. And not least his sure- footed storytelling. He seems to have an inexhaustible imagination used with a formalist technique and rightness of tone and observation.