Is There a Balm in Gilead? For Bayard Rustin On a street where it’s always summer, on a day when it’s always 1948, your song rises into ether: “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” Even though I never knew you, your singing calls me. My ears consume the timbre of your spirituals. When…
Zeus’ Soliloquy
Zeus remarks on both sides of the mythic Trojan War. The parallels to our current reality are clear.
Zeus remarks on both sides of the mythic Trojan War. The parallels to our current reality are clear.
Imagined Lost Writings of Alan Turing
Two years ago today, "The Imitation Game" came out in the UK. Dean Kostos's sestina commemorating Turing's brutal mistreatment at the hands of his government is disturbingly pertinent.
Two years ago today, “The Imitation Game” came out in the UK. Dean Kostos’s sestina commemorating Turing’s brutal mistreatment at the hands of his government is disturbingly pertinent.
Unforgotten
Dean Kostos uses the tight repetition of the ghazal form to create a powerful meditation on boyhood and growth.
A Boy Who Could See Only Purple
Through intense, lyrical images, Dean Kostos presents the early life of an intense, lyrical boy.
No Elegies for Porn Stars
Dean Kostos’s newest book, This is Not a Skyscraper, contains many gems. This reflection on a porn watcher’s sense of entitlement to the attention of a neighborhood porn star–“earned by years of yearning”–is one such standout.
Ice Garden
Dean Kostos expertly weds form and content in this poem–a villanelle–whose use of refrain and repetition reflects an old man’s movement through time and memory.
The Antique Cast
Dean Kostos brings together Abstract Expressionism and the beauty of the male form.