Ritual and Bit

"'Trust me, says what you are about to read to your beautiful ear.' And I do, I trust these quiet poems of deep loss as they spiral their way in and hold my attention, as they meander the strange stream of their own making, and arrive at that wonderful old unnameable place, poetry's heart."--Mary Ruefle, judge "You're there immediately: nirvana, crystal lucidity, light, joy, it catches you, ozone. It is as if you're walking in the woods and find a spring, almost invisible, almost unnoticeable, and you sense the water there is the beginning of the world that once was the entire Nile. How is it possible that some words carry this strange authority of the future? Because they found a new access to memory? You're thrilled, they lead you, the sense you're after a big discovery doesn't leave you."--Toma alamun "Robert Ostrom's poems arise--indeed, they could not have arisen otherwise--from an unwavering commitment not only to seeing the world, but also to the possibilities inherent in, and the ramifications of, seeing the world. Every seen thing must be invented by the seer if it is to be interacted with in any way other than instinctively. However, just as we are not often aware that we are re-constructing our memories every time we remember something, so also are we not often aware of this process. Ostrom writes from an awareness of the process--And like that / we will be leaves. And like that, there were trees.--and his poems live, because they are at every moment making."--Shane McCrae