Richard K. Ostrander

The poems in Richard K. Ostrander's The Epic of Hell Freeze (What Stays the News) shift from allusion (Andromeda, Abraham, Sisyphus) to illusion: ""He walks through walls/ On the other side of silver."" Ostrander's attention to ""language's legerdemain"" ties seemingly unrelated poems to each other like knotted scarves pulled from a magician's sleeve, using alliteration—""And a single sentence,/ Tautness of telephone lines""—as well as slant rhyme—""Flies, happy in their bottles/ Freer than fish/ that fly/ Melody or malady/ I don't know which""—and clichés twisted into new configurations—""There's a sty in the sky,/ Here's a shoulder to fry on."" —Beth Copeland