How To Dream: Poems

Riel, Steven

Amherst Writers & Artists Press

A collection of nineteen beautifully written and crafted poems.

The Spirit Can Crest

Amherst Writers and Artists Press

Number Two in the Robin Becker Chapbook Series. Selected by Robin Becker.

Postcard from P-town

Seven Kitchens Press

From the Back Cover\nIn these artful poems, Steven Riel conjures a gay boy's coming-of-age as well as the cultural referents that anchor one gay man's identity. Riel imagines Tennyson's grief at the death of his friend Arthur Hallam and Ishmael's thoughts after sharing a bed with Queequeg in persona pieces of astonishing compassion. Riel's scope includes "drag queens, who glue themselves together/ follicle by mannerism by phrase" and an ailing friend--"the raw/ toothpick you've become." I admire Riel's pacing, precise language and unflinching gaze. 
---Robin Becker, author of Domain of Perfect Affection\nThe witty, poignant, exuberant poems in Steven Riel's first collection celebrate the life and observations of "a man / with a strapless imagination / whose armoires are endless / & hold all that he might need." The reveling in gay experience calls up all sorts of poetic "fellow odd fellows," from Walt Whitman to Frank O'Hara, whose rapturous voices are echoed here. 
---John Drury, author of The Refugee Camp\nFellow Odd Fellow is a book Melville's Ishmael might have written if he'd lived in our times. What I particularly love about the poet Steven Riel is what I love about Ishmael; he is able to be sociable with the horrors of this world--the politics of prejudice, the persistence of injustice, the ruthlessness of disease. This book's unflinching honesty and quiet elegance invite us to sail as far as our imagination will let us. 
---Christopher Bursk, author of The First Inhabitants of Arcadia\nSteven Riel's Fellow Odd Fellow delineates the outsider--the odd man out--and transforms that role into a great odyssey of the mind. These poems aren't just fabulous, however: they overflow with sympathy and humor. With the outsider's keen perception Riel plays, mourns, and rejoices. These poems offer all that we might need with the ultimate reassurance that, here and now, we've "aligned / Where with What" we want to be. 
---Elizabeth Robinson, author of Blue Heron

Fellow Odd Fellow

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Trio House Press

"Steven Riel's Edgemere is gorgeous, heartbreaking, and witty - often at the same time. With exquisite precision and extraordinary musicality, Riel traces the shimmering, fragile webs of love, experience, and culture that connect us to one another. From the inner life of bullied "sissy boys" to the ravages of AIDS to inimitable pop culture reveries such as "In Search of Della Street," Riel's language creates a poetic space in which the individual, sometimes idiosyncratic perspectives he explore open into vistas on what it means to be human." 
---Joy Ladin, author of The Future is Trying to Tell Us Something\n﻿Shapeshifting abounds in Steven Riel's latest collection, as this pro-feminist gay poet marshals a parade of female personas that includes Senator Elizabeth Dole, Joan of Arc, and The Supremes. Riel's poems zigzag across liminal spaces not just between male/female and human/inhuman, but between those fallen from AIDS and survivors who grieve them.

Edgemere

Lily Poetry Review