Paul
Hostovsky
By Sharon Waller Knutson
Award winning poet, Paul Hostovsky shares his humorous and poignant poems about his life from his book, Pitching for the Apostates (Kelsay Books 2023).
Paul started writing poetry in the fifth grade, inspired by his novelist father whom he refers to as a marathon runner---whereas he sees his poet self as a sprinter. His favorite poetry moment was when Garrison Keillor read a poem of his on NPR's The Writer’s Almanac about a childhood friend whom he had lost touch with. That friend happened to hear the poem---and his own name in the poem---while driving his car, and he later got in touch with Paul to tell him he was so surprised he almost drove through the guardrail.
Peggy Landsman, author of Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate, praises Paul’s book.
“Pitching for the Apostates feels like having an intimate conversation with a very close friend. Written in his seemingly effortless style, Hostovsky’s poems disarm with their natural-sounding speaker’s voice. “Now I would rather remember life than live it,” he says in the opening poem, and remember life he does–in heartfelt poems full of bliss and sorrow, confusion and bemusement, spiced with plenty of humor and wordplay. By the time we get to the last poem, “about the warm tears/of old men,/tears that bless everything,/help nothing, no one,” we know we do, in fact, need the help of many more poems from this compulsively readable poet.”
Sleep by Howard
My cat Howard
is good at sleeping.
He can sleep on the floor.
He can sleep on the table.
He can sleep in a chair on a pile
of poems. Right now
he’s sleeping in the box
my publisher sent
with ten author copies in it.
When I took them out
he climbed right in
and went to sleep.
The box is small because
the books are skinny.
And so are the poems.
He wouldn’t fit if he didn’t
compress himself.
Poetry is compression
and Howard is a poem
filling a boxy form,
his long complicated tail
reaching around to his head,
the last line giving a nod
to the first, the poem
tidy, circular, compressed,
yet wild, leaping, carnivorous,
its sleep delicious.
My cat Howard
is good at sleeping.
He can sleep on the floor.
He can sleep on the table.
He can sleep in a chair on a pile
of poems. Right now
he’s sleeping in the box
my publisher sent
with ten author copies in it.
When I took them out
he climbed right in
and went to sleep.
The box is small because
the books are skinny.
And so are the poems.
He wouldn’t fit if he didn’t
compress himself.
Poetry is compression
and Howard is a poem
filling a boxy form,
his long complicated tail
reaching around to his head,
the last line giving a nod
to the first, the poem
tidy, circular, compressed,
yet wild, leaping, carnivorous,
its sleep delicious.
Snapshot
I am now one year older
than my mother
when she died.
And I am one year younger
than my father when he died.
So I’m right between them
like in that family snapshot
of the three of us (there were
only three of us), me in the middle,
my father leaning in, whispering
in my ear, my mother
overhearing, all of us smiling.
Except that I’m lying down now
in this hospital bed with
something that could be
anything. I don’t feel well,
I say to my mother,
who knows exactly how I feel.
Then I say it to my father,
who said it often enough
when he was dying and I was
so busy living that I had no
time for his dying. And here
comes his reply, which he seems
to whisper now, but so softly
that I have to lean in very close–
and still all I can hear
are these chirping, winking, watchful
machines I’m hooked up to.
He feels so near, though,
it almost tickles–his lips grazing my ear.
I am now one year older
than my mother
when she died.
And I am one year younger
than my father when he died.
So I’m right between them
like in that family snapshot
of the three of us (there were
only three of us), me in the middle,
my father leaning in, whispering
in my ear, my mother
overhearing, all of us smiling.
Except that I’m lying down now
in this hospital bed with
something that could be
anything. I don’t feel well,
I say to my mother,
who knows exactly how I feel.
Then I say it to my father,
who said it often enough
when he was dying and I was
so busy living that I had no
time for his dying. And here
comes his reply, which he seems
to whisper now, but so softly
that I have to lean in very close–
and still all I can hear
are these chirping, winking, watchful
machines I’m hooked up to.
He feels so near, though,
it almost tickles–his lips grazing my ear.
Coffee with the Ex
We called it coffee but neither of us
had coffee. I had tea and she had
one of those flavored water drinks
in a bottle. Coffee was a euphemism,
a metaphor, an idiom for asking
the idiot who married her thirty years ago
to come sit down across from her now
and discuss the plans for the wedding—
our son’s wedding. I’ve hated weddings
ever since ours turned out to be
a pack of pretty lies. I hadn’t said more
than a few words to her since
the divorce. I had a few things
I could say now, but I didn’t say them
because I’ve loved my son ever since
he was born. So I sipped my Earl Gray
and listened politely as she nattered on
about the bridal shower, the venue for the wedding,
the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses (sage),
the menu for the rehearsal dinner
and how much it was going to cost
me. We called it coffee but neither of us
drank coffee. We called it love
but neither of us loved each other, not
really. Or maybe we did once, but it grew
tepid, cold, bitter, and the cup that runneth over
cracked, shattered, got tossed out.
“See you at the wedding,” she said,
and we left the coffee shop together as the sky
opened up. Then I was sitting alone in my car,
the rain impinging on the parking lot,
thinking about myself and my old sadness—not
my son and his new happiness—feeling vaguely wrong
about just about everything.
We called it coffee but neither of us
had coffee. I had tea and she had
one of those flavored water drinks
in a bottle. Coffee was a euphemism,
a metaphor, an idiom for asking
the idiot who married her thirty years ago
to come sit down across from her now
and discuss the plans for the wedding—
our son’s wedding. I’ve hated weddings
ever since ours turned out to be
a pack of pretty lies. I hadn’t said more
than a few words to her since
the divorce. I had a few things
I could say now, but I didn’t say them
because I’ve loved my son ever since
he was born. So I sipped my Earl Gray
and listened politely as she nattered on
about the bridal shower, the venue for the wedding,
the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses (sage),
the menu for the rehearsal dinner
and how much it was going to cost
me. We called it coffee but neither of us
drank coffee. We called it love
but neither of us loved each other, not
really. Or maybe we did once, but it grew
tepid, cold, bitter, and the cup that runneth over
cracked, shattered, got tossed out.
“See you at the wedding,” she said,
and we left the coffee shop together as the sky
opened up. Then I was sitting alone in my car,
the rain impinging on the parking lot,
thinking about myself and my old sadness—not
my son and his new happiness—feeling vaguely wrong
about just about everything.
Pitching for the Apostates
I didn’t want to play for a losing team.
That was what it boiled down to.
I mean, the Jews got slaughtered,
annihilated--
everybody knew that. And as a kid
I was big into winning.
So I wanted nothing to do
with being Jewish. I stopped
going to Hebrew school. I boycotted
my own bar mitzvah.
I studied German in high school.
I married a lapsed Catholic and didn’t
look back. Things went along winningly.
We celebrated Christmas and New Years.
We were Americans. We were Democrats.
We were Red Sox fans. My kids
never heard of the Four Questions
and they never asked why
I quit that team all those years ago,
though today they vaguely know
that I am still somehow vaguely
part of that team–I know it myself–
even though I don’t
play for that team, don’t root for that team,
wouldn’t be caught dead
in the uniform.
I didn’t want to play for a losing team.
That was what it boiled down to.
I mean, the Jews got slaughtered,
annihilated--
everybody knew that. And as a kid
I was big into winning.
So I wanted nothing to do
with being Jewish. I stopped
going to Hebrew school. I boycotted
my own bar mitzvah.
I studied German in high school.
I married a lapsed Catholic and didn’t
look back. Things went along winningly.
We celebrated Christmas and New Years.
We were Americans. We were Democrats.
We were Red Sox fans. My kids
never heard of the Four Questions
and they never asked why
I quit that team all those years ago,
though today they vaguely know
that I am still somehow vaguely
part of that team–I know it myself–
even though I don’t
play for that team, don’t root for that team,
wouldn’t be caught dead
in the uniform.
Dear Mom
After you died,
I found that cassette tape
of you talking about your life.
It was under a pile of letters in a shoe box
on the closet floor,
labeled Memories in that hand
I would know anywhere,
a hand like a kind of
face. It’s the only recording
I have of your voice, your laugh, your way
of talking: I can hear you begin
to say a word, then pause, then choose
a different word--I can hear you
thinking. To think you’ve been dead
all these years and I can hear you thinking.
I can even hear you lip the cigarette
before you light it, still talking
with it unlit in your mouth,
lips pressed together like
a ventriloquist’s. Then I hear
the match strike and flare, I hear you
inhale. Exhale. I hear you
breathing. I have listened to that tape
hundreds of times since you died.
I listened to it again just this morning.
I’m listening very closely. Much more closely
than I ever listened to you
when you lived and breathed.
After you died,
I found that cassette tape
of you talking about your life.
It was under a pile of letters in a shoe box
on the closet floor,
labeled Memories in that hand
I would know anywhere,
a hand like a kind of
face. It’s the only recording
I have of your voice, your laugh, your way
of talking: I can hear you begin
to say a word, then pause, then choose
a different word--I can hear you
thinking. To think you’ve been dead
all these years and I can hear you thinking.
I can even hear you lip the cigarette
before you light it, still talking
with it unlit in your mouth,
lips pressed together like
a ventriloquist’s. Then I hear
the match strike and flare, I hear you
inhale. Exhale. I hear you
breathing. I have listened to that tape
hundreds of times since you died.
I listened to it again just this morning.
I’m listening very closely. Much more closely
than I ever listened to you
when you lived and breathed.
Do
For Dooder
“I’ll do the portobello omelet
with bacon and swiss,” says my son
to the waiter. And when the waiter leaves
I say, “Do? What happened to have?
You aren’t going to do anything--
they’re going to do it in the kitchen
for you. Then you’re going to have it.”
“Dad, the language is changing,
dude. It’s alive. People say do now.
All my friends say it. You can say it, too.”
“I will never say do,” I say.
And he shrugs as if to say have
it your way. Then he checks his phone.
“Do you have to always be doing that?” I say.
“Doing what?” he says.
“That,” I say, pointing at the phone.
“Can’t we have a normal conversation
the way normal people do?”
“You just said do, Dad. You’re
such a doodad.” And smiling triumphantly,
he puts his phone away. And gives me my due.
For Dooder
“I’ll do the portobello omelet
with bacon and swiss,” says my son
to the waiter. And when the waiter leaves
I say, “Do? What happened to have?
You aren’t going to do anything--
they’re going to do it in the kitchen
for you. Then you’re going to have it.”
“Dad, the language is changing,
dude. It’s alive. People say do now.
All my friends say it. You can say it, too.”
“I will never say do,” I say.
And he shrugs as if to say have
it your way. Then he checks his phone.
“Do you have to always be doing that?” I say.
“Doing what?” he says.
“That,” I say, pointing at the phone.
“Can’t we have a normal conversation
the way normal people do?”
“You just said do, Dad. You’re
such a doodad.” And smiling triumphantly,
he puts his phone away. And gives me my due.
To buy the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Pitching-Apostates-Paul-Hostovsky/dp/1639804579/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Pitching+for+the+Apostates&qid=1704505148&s=books&sr=1-1
To read more about Paul:
https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2024/02/storyteller-of-week_19.html
https://www.amazon.com/Pitching-Apostates-Paul-Hostovsky/dp/1639804579/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Pitching+for+the+Apostates&qid=1704505148&s=books&sr=1-1
To read more about Paul:
https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2024/02/storyteller-of-week_19.html
I've admired Paul Hostovky's work for years and years-- and was reminded of all the reasons why while reading his splendid poems above. His wit, his wisdom, and his artfulness have been, and remain, an inspiration to me. (And Paul, I apologize again for mis-spelling your last name on the back cover of my 2018 villanelle anthology. )
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ReplyDeleteLove Paul's work, his sense of humor, his penchant for turning the mundane into the poetic.
These poems are wonderfully wry and human. There's plenty of room in them for the reading self to enter into the poem and I did. What a treat to read them.
ReplyDeletePitching for the Apostates cracks me up, I wrote a book about the Bloomsberries, and they called themselves "The Apostles", which again, given their livestyles was ironic, and "Do" and that last line, Paul is due all our admiration, and I do mean it I do. I now pronounce us Poet and Admiring fan....
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