This Is Not What I Ordered: A Play In Several Courses

Stephen Fife

Samuel French, Inc.

These poems were originally written when I was between the ages of 15-18 or 22-27. I m now sixty and have a much different world-view and sense of self than I did then. In a few cases, this has resulted in my making some significant changes to a poem such as The Hobo, in which an entire stanza is new and some of the language is retouched, because in going back to it now, with all my subsequent experience of being an outsider in hard times, it simply resonated with me on a completely new level. I mean, the idea of poverty still had lots of romantic appeal to me at 16; at 60, after years of struggling to make the rent, not so much. Questions may arise, I suppose, about why I stopped writing poetry at 18 for four years and then stopped again for almost 35 years; and then why go back to these poems now? Most of the answers are contained in the memoir I recently finished writing, THE 13th BOY, which details the destructive relationships I had with my two high school poetry teachers at Horace Mann. One teacher in particular drove me to the brink of suicide, and I had to stop writing for those four years in order to preserve my sanity. I had a Federal poetry grant when I was 25, which allowed me to support myself for 18 months while continuing to write and give poetry readings. The end of the grant coincided with my getting married. Needing money, I turned away from poetry to other forms of writing that I hoped would provide me with a living wage. I had originally gone back to these screams into the canyon of oblivion in order to compile one volume of selected poems. But the more I worked on them, the more I found that they divided into two separate mindsets: these poems, which are more urban and experiential in nature; and others which I have grouped together in a companion volume titled DREAMING IN THE MAZE OF LOVE-GRIEF-MADNESS, and which tended to be more philosophical.

Twisted Hipster: Poetry by Stephen Fife

Cune

These searching and evocative poems by Stephen Fife dance, just like the aspirations of the girls overheard in the bathroom in the memorable Public School Boogie. Twisted Hipster is a compelling collection, alternately funny, youthful, sad, compelling, and even dramatically suspenseful ( Summer Evening, New York ). Even more impressive is his intense honesty, his loyalty to what he perceives from an early age, and his desire to share it all with the world. I couldn t recommend Twisted Hipster more strongly. You will never forget these vivid and heartfelt poems. - Lee Slonimsky, author of Wandering Electron and Logician of the Wind

"Stephen Fife, who completed his 10,000 hours decades ago, is a life-wisened, hopelessly romantic, funny sonuvabitch." - Stephen Adly Guirgis 
"A terrific selection of work ... often about sex, and how it can be a wonder of the world." - Michael Lindsay-Hogg\nCourbet's Blue Parrot is a collection of 46 poems - both heady and sexy - about Love and Sex that span 50 years of Stephen Fife's poetry, from his youthful worship of feminine enchantments to feelings of pain and bitterness following his divorce and other breakups. In his earliest poem, One, Fife writes that "There is no me, there is no you, / There is not even us - there is only/ Love, a place where we can always run/ To find each other." The ensuing poems explore the mysteries, ecstasies and conflicts to be found in this country of "Love" - a place that everyone visits, and where many of us have had our deepest and most enduring experiences.\nFife, whose examinations of desire date back to 1970, started writing a new series of poems during the lockdown in 2020. These poems are longer, more explicit, more confessional and multi-dimensional than anything he has attempted before. His purpose is to explore the nature of love and lust, from heartfelt romance to possessiveness, from the deadly serious to the farcically comic, from rose-tinged dreams and fantasies to violence, rage and disappointment. His point is that we can only move forward in discussions of gender and power dynamics by respecting ALL voices, and that understanding can only happen when the truth is seen in all its beauty and ugliness. Or, to put it more simply, Fife is attempting to "bring sexy back" to the male poetic POV, working in the tradition of Ovid, Petrarch, Andrew Marvell, and the best of Bukowski.\nThis is Fife's 12th book, and his third poetry collection, after Dreaming in the Maze of Love-Grief-Madness (2014) and Twisted Hipster (2015), both published by Cune Press who also published Fife's two memoirs, Best Revenge: How the Theatre Changed My Life and Has Been Killing Me Ever SinceandThe 13th Boy: A Memoir of Education and Abuse - an Amazon bestseller, which was featured in The Huffington Post and People Magazine.\nFife's novel Angel's Glance (2019), which Kirkus Reviews called, "A haunting and keenly observed meditation on relationships, parenthood, and the vagaries of celebrity and fame," will be re-issued in 2022 under the title Loving Holly.\nFife came back to his first literary love, poetry, through ShiftPoetry(TM) workshops and ShiftPoetry Press is publishing COURBET'S BLUE PARROT as the first in a series of poetry volumes by Fife.\nA graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia School of the Arts, Fife has written several stage plays, screenplays and streaming projects. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice and New Republic. He is the recipient of a Federal Poetry Grant.\n"Drawing inspiration from such poets as D.H. Lawrence and Charles Bukowski, Fife encourages us to awaken the part of ourselves we want to be again. This book is about what the world has forgotten: that poetry saves our ass." - Wendy Oxenhorn

Courbet's Blue Parrot: Poems about Love and Sex

Self-Help

Relationships

Shiftpoetry(tm)

Best Revenge: How Theater Saved My Life and Has Been Killing Me Ever Since

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

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Books by Stephen Fife