Sonnets for the Trilingual Family Man

To write fresh and compelling sonnets in the 21st century takes a great deal of craft. But what does it take to reinvent the sonnet form altogether? In Eugene Ostashevsky’s case, it takes gumption, playfulness, a mastery of many languages, a wide range of intellectual reference, and above all, a whole lot of wit. In his The Feeling Sonnets (NYRB, 2022) you will find every kind of humor: There’s parody and absurdism, slapstick, hyperintellectual snickering, cross-lingual puns, and dad jokes.