Winner of the 2008 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry

Winner of the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize
Steve Fellner: Blind Date With Cavafy

 

Steve Fellner’s poetry is spunky, raw, immediate, and utterly compelling. Blind Date with Cavafy serves up hilarious pathos and devastating humor. Bleak, deadpan, enthusiastic, earnest: Steve Fellner’s book is all of these things, sometimes all of these things in one poem, sometimes all of these things in one line. His “Self-Portrait” at the center of the book pushes the conventions of the post-confessional, transgressive impulse. The poems in Blind Date with Cavafy shimmer with vulnerability, leaps, and dizzying riffs. —Denise Duhamel, judge of the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize

Summer is a time to catch up with friends, to hang out over a cold drink, to unburden yourself of secrets old and new. Reading Blind Date With Cavafy, poems by Steve Fellner (Marsh Hawk Press, $12.50), is like dishing with a new best friend. Some poems, like “Upon Discussing Whether We Should Condescend to Science-Fiction Writers,” are laugh-out-loud hilarious while others, like “Self-Portrait,” are breathtaking in their emotional breadth. And the best thing about poetry collections is that you can read them cover-to-cover in one sitting, or dip into them indulgently from time to time. —Lynn Kilpatrik, Salt Lake City Weekly

In emotionally generous, arch, complex & zany narratives with outrageous premises & a cast of characters that includes God, Li Po, & Miss La La (Degas’ black acrobat), these poems roll out like red carpets so quickly & convincingly you almost don’t notice you’re being taken into an intimate theater where standing in a long line to enter heaven doesn’t even seem surreal. —Steve Orlen

At the risk of offering hyped-up praise, the kind of blurb Steve Fellner would want to commit to memory, let me say that when his masks begin to fall away, an authentic face remains. Start with “Short Cuts.” Or any of his poems that conjure up the likes of Catullus, Cavafy, Satan, or Eve. Then head straight to his tour de force “Self-Portrait.” These poems, fashioned out of an edgy wit, will break your heart. —Timothy Liu

Steve Fellner’s poems have a wonderful innocence and playfulness that so many of us lose, or forget that we have. They sneak up on you—while you’re laughing and admiring their wit and sparkle, they’ll swoop down and kick your ass. —Jim Daniels

When Emerson wrote, “I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all,” he probably wasn’t thinking of Steve Fellner, though he might as well have been. When Fellner refers to “fanged anorexic midget space aliens” who have come to earth to rape our pets, we see those little buggers... But it’s not all fun; my eyes reddened when I read of the lover who left an apologetic suicide letter, an act adroitly connected to the writing of CliffsNotes. Blind Date with Cavfy is fine writing at its best; I’ll be looking into my copy again and again.—David Kirby


ISBN-10: 0-9785555-2-X
ISBN-13: 978-0978555-2-8
(pbk) $12.50

 

TWO POEMS BY STEVE FELLNER

Desperate Calls

The summer I turned seventeen I worked
for a bill collection agency. Hiding
in the far back corner of the office,
I whispered wishy washy threats to people,
my voice lower than the most muted elevator music.
I reminded someone with a thick Russian accent
to seal the envelope, so the check wouldn’t slip
away again. Mother had stopped drinking.
Once after I crept inside our house, I saw
her sitting Indian style in front of the empty liquor cabinet.
She was muttering to herself. I couldn’t understand
her words. Unlike the Russian who said her child
died and “funerals cost money,” I couldn’t tell
mother to slow down, articulate. She pantomimed
a wine glass and then brought its rim to her lips.
She offered to pour me a glass. “No,” I said. I drank
straight from the bottle, swishing the invisible liquid
inside my mouth, never wanting to forget the taste
of nothing. Two desks to my right was Jack, a bald-headed,
bearded man who was always clearing his throat. Whenever
someone swore, he hung up. I never disconnected.
Once after a man called him a cocksucker and threatened
to bomb the building, Jack set down the phone and strutted
out of the office. I picked up the phone and heard tears,
the same ones mother shed in the locked bathroom
after we forced our burps and pretended to stagger
drunkenly around the apartment, promising
that this was the last time. Cold turkey.
We swore. I imagined Jack sitting on the bathroom toilet,
his trousers around his ankles, hitting his head
lightly against the wall. “Send the check,” I said
to the client on the line and then added, “Please.”
He promised it wouldn’t be more than two days.
Fed-Ex. Swear to Christ. You've got my word.


Epiphanies

Everyone was having them. You couldn’t walk
through the neighborhood streets without seeing people
smacking their foreheads with the palms of their hands,
bragging about another bright idea. Every morning people gossiped
about those who fled their houses during the middle of the night,
leaving their spouses and kids with no better explanation
than carpe diem. By noon all the bars were filled. “Free drinks for everyone,”
someone shouted every couple of minutes, wanting to celebrate
their latest revelation with everybody else. Office supply stores
and card shops couldn’t keep journals and diaries in stock
for more than a couple hours. No one dared ask anyone “How are you?”
unless they had an entire afternoon to spare.
I waited for my epiphany. I tried to be patient. Would it hit me
like a bolt of lightening, striking my skull with such force
I could be laid up in a recovery ward for months?
Or would it sneak up on me like a pinprick? Something I might
not even notice if I was too busy reveling in everybody else’s revelations?
Would an epiphany be more likely to enter a quiet house
or descend upon a rowdy block party? A peaceful meadow
or busy shopping mall? Would it offer its wisdom in the form
of a direct statement or a cagey rhetorical question?
Could one have multiple epiphanies, one right after the other?
Or does it offer its news in distinct, evenly spaced installments?
Would it want me to lavish praise upon its presence like Zoloft or Prozac?

Or would it prefer to go unnoticed, unmentioned like your mother’s advice
you take for granted? And what happens when the moment is over,
the life changed? Does the epiphany disappear from the mind
like memorized facts from history books? Or does it reincarnate itself
into the suddenly remembered final digit of a telephone number?
Or the long-forgotten name of an acquaintance who never stopped thinking of you?