Regular Haunts

“There’s that delightful surface, sparkling with wit, with satire, with wordplay, and then there’s always that something else, that mystery maybe a fathom beneath the sun on the waves.”-from the introduction by Ted Kooser
 

“Costanzo is a grief-ridden observer of the kulchur. He reminds us of what we had, what we lost, perhaps what we never knew- and he does it in a mature, wise, lovely cadence. He is smart yet humble, full of pity for all of us, full of amazement. ‘When I first heard about America,’ he says, ‘it was already too late.’ He is one of our prophets.”-Gerald Stern
 

“This is truly poetry in the American grain. Costanzo looks unflinchingly at our totems, artifacts, and folkways and sets them down just as they are, with a deadly but affectionate irony.”-Carolyn Kizer
 

“Costanzo’s wit and satire and vision of the grotesque world of America get to the center of much of the madness of our culture.”-Peter Balakian