Edgemere

by Steven Riel

"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



Shapeshifting 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.

Steven Riel is the author of one full-length collection of poetry (Fellow Odd Fellow) and three chapbooks.

98 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2021

Reviews

[Josette · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems come from such a deep well of love — for the self in the poems (the little boy, the teenager, the grown man with so much to lose) as well as those in affinty with the speaker (brother, lover, star, nuns and priests) — these poems have no choice but to hit you in the gut. Even when they are making you smile to yourself (wry smile), there is a sadness or a sense of regret or loss that undergirds the humor. If you can't laugh, then cry. The virtuosities of the technical craft also will not disappoint: the line, word choice, sonics, intention, consistency. I can't stand how good "I Never Went Back to You" is. I love "Echo" with its image of a stamp to heaven. The poem "The Woman with a Transparent Purse" feels like it was written for me — for every T-riding woman. I also appreciate the poems grappling with Catholic identity and upbringing, as well as the poems taking on a rainbow of voices: Liddy Dole, Barbara Streisand, a cage. I want to congratulate you: Bravo! What a terrific book. I hope someday soon I can ask you to sign my copy. ❤️

[Gerard Cabrera · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I'm reading now is Edgemere, a collection of poems by my friend Steven Riel, who I am looking forward to hearing read live or virtually very soon! These finely wrought poems carry great emotion in the thrifty tradition of New England where nothing is wasted and every word counts. 'm really taken by the ending of the last poem, Spell's Reversal. "I was No. / I was awake before I awoke."