"Steve Fellner’s hard-edged second poetry collection, which doesn’t disguise or sugar-coat the more disturbing scenarios of gay men’s lives...He writes with disarming honesty, even acerbity, as he walks past the posturing of skinny pants and pretty boy poetics to infuse the idealized queer lifestyle, particularly in privileged urban settings, with a reality check."—Rigoberto Gonzalez, Lambda Literary Review

“Fellner is not one to subtlety evoke the muse and have her demurely pull back the veil of revelation. Rather, he has her throw aside the curtain like the Wizard of Oz dressed as a burlesque figure, hoist a tacky disco ball, and shout out across the heads of the audience, “One last round!” Of course it sounds more like ammunition than drinks. That statement is not condemnation –– but praise as ruthless as Steve Fellner’s poetics. In The Weary World Rejoices, Fellner braids together Walt Whitman, crystal meth, exclamation marks, Ritalin, car trouble, Matthew Shepard (half saint), Matthew Shepard (half lottery ticket).”—Scott Hightower, Fogged Clarity

“Steve Fellner is not afraid to be unlikeable, which is precisely why I trust him completely. These are poems of rage and shame, confession in its purest sense—not employed to elicit sympathy or shock but because the stakes are very high: tell the truth or cease to exist. Prepare for journeys to psych wards and ERs; know that your guides will be Miss Piggy and meth, cyberspace and the shadows of the dead. Know, too, that you will meet forms of the divine, and forms of deeply earnest love. Steve Fellner fully understands—especially in his haunting cycle of poems to Matthew Shepard—the distance respect requires, and the intimacy poetry demands.”—Lia Purpura

“The weary world, according to Steve Fellner, offers plenty of desire, flesh and other curious stuff to distract from the moral bones of this book: psych wards, overheard snippets of conversation, gay bars, clouds, crystal meth, sex with strangers, sex with lovers... Who can concentrate with all that racket? You can. Don’t let Fellner’s riot of humor, his comedy of want ads, fool you. There’s method in this madness, even if ‘Explanation never / satisfies. It / always wants / something / like redemption.’“ —Julie Sheehan

“Steve Fellner’s poems play on the knife edge between heartfelt and heartless, understanding that the most honest forms of speech include both bathos and bastardry. Lots of collections claim to be edgy: this is one of the few collections that actually scares me.” —Paisley Rekdal

Praise for Blind Date With Cavafy, Winner of the 2008 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry and Winner of the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize

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