Penultimate Human Constellation : a Father and Son Converse in Poems

My dad used to call me bud, I called him dad, or daddy. So as not to confuse him with my grandfather whom was called pop before I was born. And long after also, though I never got to hear him call my name aloud. He was gone before I arrived.

Penultimate Human Constellation is a conversation in verse between father and son in contemporary northeast USA.

The son, Benjamin, his voice is distinct from the father, Steven.

Full disclosure : Steven Ostrowski is a person with whom I have been acquainted since a very young age. Even today we could probably sit and converse about what’s happened to the old neighborhood for at least a six pack. (Each). 

Yet, his son, Benjamin Ostrowski, was a stranger to me. Still I can see the influence the father has had on the son. Much more subtle is the influence of child on parent. Especially when the child has reached such a flower of maturity I am certain he no longer wishes to be referred to as a child. Yet so we all are.

Part One:Seen/Unseen Lovely, hypnotic verse full of twists , turns and surprises.

Pages 28 & 29. Temperatures by Benjamin and Omniscient Sky by Steven are such wonderful examples of this influence. Tattoos for the son, kissing later for the father are themes stitched together through early pages. 

Part Two: q and a, Poems of Inquiry, the poetry in call and response kicks into high gear with questions and answers. Spiced with wry humor and deep passion for familial bonds, not just father son, but husband/wife, father/daughter, sister, mother, brother/adopted son, gardener and soil. Answers to all the questions: Advice as fine as intricate embroidery.

Part 3. Post Cards from far, far away. (I was going to say Post Cards from the Edge, but this collection does such a nice job of putting cliches in a Cuisinart that I changed my mind. )

For my generation, going to Hanoi was nothing but bad news. For soldiers like John McCain and Hollywood royalty Jane Fonda alike. Nothing good ever happened to an American in Hanoi. Yet Benjamin puts me into the heart of that darkness with a fusion meal and I feel I begin to know the individual man.

And his father’s response to a son’s journey is no less cosmic than the effects the moon has on tides. What I find so daunting about math is its relentless discipline. How even at its most creative it’s used to uncover and express what is already present. Yet math is an intricate part of the verse here and yet so masterfully applied one forgets it is there.

These poems especially make me feel like a voyeur eaves-dropping and making a spectacle of the father/prodigal son relationship. Only because the images are so razor sharp, I can almost smell the New England grass clippings and see that little boy shot putting a baseball to the delight of all fathers.

Part Four: What Matters

What matters? Matters of course. There were no Woodstock Gurus in sight because you were not looking in a mirror Steven, and stumbling upon Bears I could almost swear I began to detect a wry code between the two friends, one friend with more ahead than behind and the other with more past than tomorrow, but still expressing the mystery of mortality with every thought. And at the same time, their collective thinking back, rings of truth about family and reassured me that the confusing conundrum of young manhood has not changed since I was young.

Maybe I don’t read enough poetry, or just have not set aside the time, but I rarely encounter a book of poems which becomes a real page turner. And so this morning, I began to read Penultimate Human Constellation : a Father and Son Converse in Poems, and I could not put it down. It was the very best way to spend these hours.