Customer Reviews

Blind Date With Cavafy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Steve Fellner's debut collection eschews self-regarding eloquence in favor of direct, funny, and cunningly crafted verse. His eye takes in everything from 19th-century acrobats and the legendary Tomb of Eve to modern call centers and the adopted child's uneasy search for Mother. Blind Date with Cavafy makes you pay closer attention to those half-overheard conversations in midnight diners. It shows you the commonplace in the exotic, the fantastic in the mundane.

"We become our own gods without even knowing it." Fellner writes in his poem The Concept of an External Soul and whether those gods are the gods of his God in the Box poem or locked in a safe with Knowledge: a blue-eyed dwarf, the mind of these poems is ingenious and unpredictable enough to seduce a reader into following. A mother and a son get drunk on imaginary wine "never wanting to forget the taste of nothing," we condescend to science fiction writers allowing them to believe that we too, believe that earth and the planets "and all the other galaxies in the Universe are a popcorn trail, leading us to the heart of God." These poems reach into history, out to gods, up to God, down to earth, through time and space to date Cavafy, to chastise Catallus, to "Consider the Fates" plus Eve, Miss Lala, Joice Heth and their speaker, in the brilliant, strange and wholly unforgettable Self-Portrait. But they never seem to be reaching beyond their grasp. For the authentic, direct voice,agility,and the circus of the best kind of strangeness, you should go out with these poems. This is one blind date you'll thank your friends for.