The Sentence That Ends With a Comma

Kostos, Dean

Like dreams we wake from, with such strong emotions that our whole days are cast in the colors of their images, Dean Kostos' poems startle us with pictograms of vividly emotional late twentieth century life. Lover of a linguistic curve, trained as a visual artist, Kostos takes us deep into his voluptuous sentences that are compelled to end with commas. Because he is so frank about his fears and so fearless about his imagery, the poet becomes a daring guide to a surreal world underpinned by the real pathos of love and mourning. Molly Peacock

Dean Kostos' poems are chiseled with masterly craft. Dazzling surreal imagery and deep feelings fuse in these poems, many of which are as beautiful as priceless objects from the golden age of Greek civilization. Kostos is a poet of many gifts. I am sure we'll be hearing again from him in the future. He's the real thing. Jaime Manrique

Fluid is a good way to describe Dean Kostos' style--"calligraphy of swim on thirsty paper"-- moving with ease between the classical and the contem- porary, the seductive and the straightforward. Whether eavesdropping on mannequins in a bridal shop or wandering through a "museum of scent," the reader will be glad to follow his "lines' lush variety" all the way to the last comma. Elaine Equi

Music carries Dean Kostos to the hall of mirrors where sounds arrive before the train lands on the moon. Some tell him to think about "reality," but he knows it's all actual. The words in here are arrows and the poems are apples we eat in delight. John Yau

I'm rarely excited by most unknown poets, but am amazed at Dean Kostos' originality, his 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 technique and rightness of tone and observation. This brilliant, perceptive book is informed by poetic intelligence and dazzling metaphors. A cross-cultural Euro-American melange of 20th century innovative styles merges into Kostos' distinct voice. Harold Norse