Books

Life Field, poems

To order, email sostrow2@sbcglobal.net. At present, all orders of Life Field made directly to Steven will also receive, free of charge, an original 5x7 painting.

Persons of Interest 

Poetry. Wolfson Press (2022)

Winner of the 2021 Wolfson Press Chapbook Prize

Penultimate Human Constellation Steven and Benjamin Ostrowski (Tolsun Books, 2018)

Poetry. Penultimate Human Constellation is a conversation in poems. A father sends out his light to his orbiting son, who hopscotches across the stars of college and Southeast Asia. Back and forth across states, oceans, and galaxies, they explore themselves, their connections, and their futures. Though their styles and their minds differ, together they write one honest and vulnerable dialogue in our particularly fraught time, when conversations are more like volleys of digital cannonfire. Penultimate Human Constellation pushes back against toxic masculinity, serving as a much-needed example of the expression of the important father-son connection that is both poignant and refreshing.

After the Tate Modern

Poetry. Description (include that they can contact you to purchase; excerpt below)

In Late Fields

Poetry. “If, as Robert Browning once wrote, ‘God is the perfect poet who in his person acts his own creations,’ then Steve Ostrowski’s poetry is one of those creations made manifest. Imbued with quietude and divinity, sparked by the unremittingly human, these poems take on the difficult, crucial task of making meaning in a world that satirizes and cannibalizes itself, never flinching from the ad absurdum nature of language and contemporary life, while maintaining an intrepid belief in the redemptive power of love. In a climate where too many poems with sparkling surfaces drift like flotsam past awareness, these are poems of substance and intentionality, borne from the idllys of childhood, the charge of being a devoted husband and father, the unasked-for task of carrying on the secret imperatives passed on to us from our ancestors, and Ostrowski manages to explore such fundamental subjects with characteristic wit and panache.'” --Ravi Shankar

Birds, Boys, God

Poetry. Description

Seen/unseen Steven and Benjamin Ostrowski

Poetry. Seen/unseen is an ecstatically authentic conversation, poetry full of unapologetic humanity. This is not just call and response but challenge and answer, parry and thrust. Two voices calling each other higher, reveling in each other's performance. We could not ask for more from such a talented father-son team. --Will Hicks, author of Stargazer's Kitchen

Seen/Unseen gives us the visions that occur when each participant closes their eyes, opens themselves to the world and speaks from one soul to another. The commonplace and the miraculous intertwine in this exchange of the gifts the father brings the son, and the son brings the father, when both open their souls to the other and view what they hold in their hearts. --Gian Lombardo

A Pile of Crosses 

Fiction. With beautiful, aching language and imagery that stretches across medium and time, Steven Ostrowski’s A Pile of Crosses equally employs prose and poetry, snippet and college to capture a singular story: those defining moments between coming-of-age and being too old to care. These deeply East Coast, nostalgic studies of fractured families and the friends slipping under the weight of time are a testament to what it means to be human, and what it means to hope. --Joe Clifford, author of Junkie Love and Lamentation.

Selections of Poetry and Fiction

Skeleton Blood Memoir with Bob (poetry)

Poems from Southeast Asia, Poems from Southeast Connecticut Steven & Benjamin Ostrowski (poetry)

Wake (flash fiction)

Even on Good Nights (flash fiction)

In the Courtyard of the Jester (fiction)