Review by Kelly Jarvis: Life Field by Steven Ostrowski

Steven Ostrowski’s semi-autobiographical poetry collection, Life Field, traces the development of a poet through the liminal spaces of life. His opening poem, “What is a Life Field?” unfolds as a series of questions that introduces a “boy, curly-haired, cautious, / reckless, climbing a rotted trestle” in the fields behind his home. In his second poem, “Babe in Smoke,” he reveals that even at four years old, “poems were / already inventing themselves inside me, since a poem is a / body within a body breathing underneath the heart and / pulsing like stars all over the brain.”  Deftly twisting the sacred mysteries of life and writing together from the first page of the collection, Ostrowski’s work propels readers forward, taking them on a beautiful and haunting journey through the fields of time.

Life Field explores boyhood and heartbreak, bliss and brotherhood, “driving / under the influence / of memory” as it careens through life, noting the poet’s adolescent inspiration Bob Dylan, “Shakespeare’s orphan,” whose “ghost songs, / even fifty years down the highway, / shiver like the last hotel in the hurricane.” There are poems about lost friends and human history, poems for the writer’s daughter and sons, poems about aging men playing ice hockey, and poems that contemplate the silence that “opens between two sounds.” Ostrowski’s strain of nostalgia is both intimate and universal, prompting readers to travel through the landscapes of their own lives with renewed wonder.

Written to “deepen the mystery of what it means to be human,” the poems in Life Field continue singing long after the book is closed. Pieces titled “What is Forgiveness?” and “What is Love?” echo the format of Ostrowski’s first poem, offering readers a series of thoughtful questions after his poignant and repetitive admission “I don’t know.” The final poem, titled “Life Field” returns to the image of the “curly-haired boy / filthy with innocence / a kind of me,” bringing closure to the collection while simultaneously opening the space for continued contemplation.

By anchoring his “autobiography of sorts” within a series of pastoral landscapes, Ostrowski moves his readers through the liminal spaces of individual life while connecting them to the boundless beauty of humanity. Thought provoking, transcendent, and accessible, this collection is for anyone willing to be swept away by the mysteries of language and life.

You can purchase the book here.

Kelly Jarvis works as the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine and teaches writing and literature at Central Connecticut State University. Her work has been featured in A Moon of One’s Own, Blue Heron Review, Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer, Mermaids Monthly, The Chamber Magazine, The Magic of Us, and Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. Her debut novella, Selkie Moon, was released in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/