In his fourth poetry collection, The Bear Wrestler (Saturnalia Books), Writing alum Robert Ostrom ’08 blurs fact and fiction, deception and truth. Unwinding the myths and memories—and genetic code—of his family history, Ostrom untangles and tangles once again the masked layers of storytelling: masculinity inscribed into his DNA weaving through fatherhood; inherited narratives and the identities crafted by them.
“But why tell these stories through poetry?” Ostrom posed in an interview with The Rumpus. “Poetry has a unique ability to convey truth, even when it tells a lie. Poetry lives in a space where emotional and symbolic truths carry more weight than the literal. Maybe that makes it the appropriate medium for stories like these.”
At the center of the collection is “the bear—guide, father, sister, speaker, reader, and god,” Ostrom’s website explains. Whether metaphorically, anthropomorphically, or literally, the varying incarnations of the bear sift through the lyrical truths that shape collective family histories, including that his father, a master storyteller, wrestled a real, live bear. In turn, Ostrom wrestles, through poetry, the intricate labyrinth of story and storytelling as well.
“If we think of the bear as something deeply primal and untamed, a force within us that’s authentic, strong yet vulnerable, ferocious yet gentle…I’d say we each have our own bear,” Ostrom continued. “The bear could be the part of us that grapples with our fears, our desires, or the truths we don’t always want to face. We wrestle it, flee from it, or pull it close—and more often than not, we’re doing all of these at once.”
A professor of English at CUNY, Robert Ostrom is the author of Sandhour (Saturnalia Books 2019), Ritual and Bit (winner of the 2015 Saturnalia Books Prize judged by Mary Ruefle), and The Youngest Butcher in Illinois (2013 Norma Farber First Book Award finalist). His work has appeared in The Bennington Review, The Boston Review, Lana Turner, and elsewhere.
