upstreet poet Hostovsky publishes collection

Dear Truth, a poetry collection by Paul Hostovsky, has been published by Main Street Rag. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in three issues of upstreet: “A Woman Taking off Her Shirt” (number four), “The Sadness of Dads” (number five), and “Frame” (number six). Paul’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award from The Comstock Review, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, and the Frank Cat Press. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac and Best of the Net. His first full-length collection, Bending the Notes (2008) is also available from Main Street Rag. Paul works in Boston as a sign language interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Here is the book’s title poem:

Dear Truth
I do not love you.

I am running away
with my beloved
illusions. The sweet
nothings. Nothing
is what it seems.
I love what seems.
I am crazy in love with
the painfully obvious
transparent surface.
I am simply hungry.
You keep the house
and everything in it.
I am taking the dog.
And the windows.
—Paul Hostovsky

“Although the title poem is a sort of Dear John letter to Truth, the book itself is, in fact, dedicated to truth on a larger scale: the expansive and various truth of the imagination. In these touching, finely crafted, and often funny poems, Hostovsky remains true to his lively and inquisitive vision of the world, to beauty, joy, pain, and grief, always displaying a love of language that is contagious and invigorating.” —Jeffrey Harrison