FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST

Submissions Meet the Editor-in-Chief January 2018 March 2019 May/June 2021 Meet the Associate Editor July 2021 November 2019 January/February 2019 Book Review - Lyn Lifshin's "Ballroom" March 2020 September 2021 May 2020 Book Review: Amy Holman's Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window July/August 2018 Book Review: Kit Kennedy Reviews Heller Levinson September 2012 Book Review - Patricia Carragon Reviews Leigh Harrison November 2012 January 2020 March/April 2022 Book Review - Dean Kostos "Rivering" May 2013 Book Review: Hochman Reviews Ormerod Summer Issue 2013 September 2020 November/December 2018 McMaster Reviews Szporluk July/August 2014 November 2014 Book Review: Wright Reviews Gardner Stern Reviews Katrinka Moore May 2015 Hochman Reviews Ross July 2020 Tocco Reviews Simone September 2015 Simone Reviews Cefola May 2016 Bledsoe Reviews Wallace November 2016 January 2017 May 2017 Wehrman Reviews Dhar July 2017 September 2023 March 2018 May 2019 July 2019 September 2019 November 2023 March 2021 November 2021 WINTER 2022 Hochman Reviews Metras May 2022 November/December 2022 January/February 2023 March/April 2023 May 2023 July 2023



BOOK REVIEW 

APRIL 2013                 

                                                      Rivering by Dean Kostos
                                                      Spuyten Duyvil Press (NYC, 2012)

                                                       ISBN978-1-933132-37-2

                                                      Reviewed by Ilka Scobie

What fires burn green
            emerging from the lint of winter?
                          . . .

What snowy words unravel
            from white kimonos, only then to melt?

                                                    Dean Kostos, "Words Unravel"


An amplified blaze of color ignites Dean Kostos' latest incandescent collection, "Rivering." Evoking his early childhood photographs and moving on to foreign shores, the poet poignantly salutes teenage suburban angst and moves on to celebrate eclectic artistic endeavors. A river of memory, travel, and art history rushes and flows through these powerful, provocative poems. Divided into three parts, "Rivering" takes the reader on a mystical journey.

Inspiration transmutes to new ekphrastic creations as Kostos, a trained and exhibited artist, turns his eye upon paintings by Bearden, Kandinsky, Gorky, Manet, Balthus, and Bellows. His language and sensibilities bridge a world that combines a poet's lyricism and artistic vision. He reinvigorates a literary tradition that dates back to Homer, Plato, Socrates, and continues on with William Blake, Rilke, W.H. Auden, and John Ashbery, just some of the writers who have extended metaphors inspired from visual art. Kostos creates conversations that address both subjects:

Does the trainer want to caress the boxer? Whatever he
wants, he finds intimacy in being useful
and accepts the role

and gifts the reader with impressions:

Tousled bangs shade deep-set eyes.  Or are they
black and blue?"

(from "Introducing John L. Sullivan," a painting by George Bellows).

The poet's engagement with perception leads to startling images, like the painterly palette from "Last Painting," after Ashile Gorky:

The painter dry-brushed the canvas black and gray, scouring memory
 

and continues with,

Red scribbled: fires, blood, shriveled kisses.

The poem manages to beautifully capture the essence of the Armenian-born artist, who fused European aesthetics with American vibrancy.

These are poems peopled with George Hurrell, Jean Harlow, Walt Whitman, Pythia, even Miss Havisham. Then, with a poignantly rendered history lesson, "Homage to Alan Turing", the poet reignites our awareness of the mathematician and pioneer computer scientist who fell victim to homosexual persecution in post-war London. With a chanting, rhythmic purity, Turing, the World War II cryptanalyst is introduced:

Because you endowed the electronic mind
with spinning cryptograms,
a vernacular of brainwork ---

Ending the poem with this benison, Kostos salutes a forgotten hero.

Because the Apple logo now bleeds with your poisoned
saliva, your mouth crusted with decades
Of silence ---

Because I can love another man, and because this world
all too willingly forgets, I thank you, writing this
on a computer

Brief, deliberate stanzas and precise punctuation reflect a spare elegance and stylistic maturity. The poet's erudition is always balanced with curiosity and compassion.  His passionately personal subject matter draws the reader into an enigmatic world of self-exploration, history, and mythology (both classical and emotional). Bridging continents and centuries, he explores deeply individualized topics and simplifies complex ideas with an effortless cadence. Kostos' voice possesses a rare virtuosityand resonates with an individual truth of opulent observation and experience.

Ilka Scobie is a native New Yorker who teaches poetry in the public school system.  Her poetry appears in LiveMag, Vanitas, and Poetry in Performance, and her art criticism is published in Artnet and ArtCritical.  She collaborates with her husband, photographer Luigi Cazzaniga, for Italian Marie Claire. 

Dean Kostos is the author of four poetry collections, as well as the editor of Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry.  He is the co-editor of Mama's Boy:  Gay Men Write about Their Mothers (a Lambda Book Award Finalist).  He has taught at Wesleyan, the Gallatin School of NYU, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and Gotham Writers' Workshop.  He is currently on the faculty of The City University of New York and Berkeley College.  Trained initially as a visual artist, his works have been exhibited in galleries and at the Brooklyn Museum.