REVIEWS and INTERVIEWS:

• Review. “Cliff Fyman’s Taxi Night,” by Jim Cohn in the Brooklyn Rail. 12/2021.

• Review of Taxi Night, by Marc Olmsted in Sensitive Skin.
  November 2021.

• Interview of Cliff Fyman by Elinor Nauen at Rochford Street Review, October 19, 2021, Australia.

• Excerpt of Taxi Night at Rochford Street Review.

• Boog City Features Cliff Fyman (2021)
  Poems and Artwork by Cliff. Interviews by Elinor Nauen and Sue Visakowitz

• Carla Scarano review for Temz Review (2021).

• Anthony Madrid review on Rhino Poetry (2021).

Taxi Night

Cliff Fyman

Cliff Fyman’s Taxi Night is a splendid and powerful book-length poem in four parts. The real-life patter and ambience of his fares reach the hackie, Fyman, as he transports a rainbow cast of denizens around the boroughs from 5 p.m. until 5 a.m. The first two sections are transcribed from overheard cellphone combat, or a jiving fare who tries to play Fyman verbally, or more than a few nutcases. But Fyman’s show is the farthest thing from a freak show. Each appearance at the mike, so to speak, is brief. Fyman presents the words he captures in precisely sculpted form, ingenious line breaks, one word lines – from-the-gut poems which retain a credible verbatim and are rigorously artful. Eloquence in their realism. The last two sections increasingly are transcribed from Fyman’s own silent, deeply inner verbatim. These pieces are equally Swiss-movement poems. Vibrant slices of anonymous lives rendered with a dramedy of depth and compassion. A moving celebration of whatever we become when we buy a ride and take to the backseat stage.
—John Godfrey

Taxi Night is strong and clear like an ink drawing with bold lines that are few and stark but tell the whole story, the place and time, the people, how they think and speak, the music of it, a documentation of the undocumented, simultaneously very close and very far, which is how people are.
—Tania Susskind

There’s no better place to view the human condition than the driver’s seat of a New York City cab. Just ask poet Cliff Fyman, who has transformed his stint behind the wheel into Taxi Night, a touching, sometimes mind-blowing work. Through lovingly handled “found” material; curious diction; and acute, sometimes deadpan observation, Fyman gives the reader all the drama, humor and pathos that comes from a steady stream of humanity in the backseat. He has an excellent ear for everyday speech and the sharp editing skills of a top-notch documentarian. Read Taxi Night slowly or breathlessly.  Read it all the way through or read it in bits. Either way, you’re in for a great ride.
—Peter Bushyeager

Dude, they are pure gold! They capture the upper class in unguarded moments. Yr bits are the highlight of my day!
—Ron Kolm

It was amazing. The voices of New Yorkers shine through in this stunning book-length poem that chronicles the conversations from the backseat of a cab as notated by the driver. As poet Charles Reznikoff did 50+ years ago with his grand works Testimony and Holocaust, the poet here allows the speech of others to compose the text. We get the raw and unguarded rantings and ruminations of passengers who, in aggregate, delineate – and bring to life – the wide range of class and ethnicities that make up the city. The poems build momentum using line breaks to spiral the unfiligreed recitations into ever-revealing crescendoes.
—Greg Masters, 5 stars on Goodreads. 6/6/2021

Letters of Praise for Taxi Night

The cover is fantastic, did you do that artwork? is it a real book or is that just a cover image for the reading? It should be! If it is, I need a copy! I love the work ~ especially the one with Ron but all of it, it’s like a Philip Whalen novel, down to earth & so accepting & loving. The art makes me want to make a book-length series of TSP poems & use one of these for a cover - the one with color is especially nice. Thank you & congratulations on one of the best readings EVER. The work was perfect in every way & you read perfectly. I think you maybe are the only poet in 40 years who has absorbed & can use WCW, in your own way, of course. Your answers to the (excellent) questions people posed were likewise perfect. Maggie & I spent a pleasurable hour afterwards praising you & your book.
—Elinor Nauen, 12 May 2021

What a gift you brought me today! thank you for the copy of Taxi Night. I’m reading it now, the poems capture so many voices. I love the range of long and short, the sparser ones really jump out at you, allowing what’s a common and familiar sounding language to become something a bit more. These poems feel generous, observant, humanizing.
—Marisa Malone, 7 May 2021

Thank you so much for sending Taxi Night. I had rushed out + bought a copy! So will give un- inscribed to some lucky person. It’s quite wonderful + am looking forward to upcoming zoom. Keep writing—love the taxi motif. Love, Maureen.
—Maureen Owen, 2 June 2021

CONGRATS!! and thank you so much for the signed copy of Taxi Night. I’ve already sped through half of it—and love it.
—Anne Waldman, 28 May 2021

The book arrived Monday and I took it out of the envelope sat down in my one comfortable chair and read it through from cover to cover in one sitting (with a break to feed the cat.) Brilliant!
—Richard Modiano, Director Emeritus, Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, 9 June 2021

It's quite beautiful--you should be very proud--both in content and appearance. I'm quite impressed by your tenacity, vision, and love of people, as evidenced by the care you've shown in recording the snapshots of your fare's lives at that brief moment in time when you were transporting them safely back into their anonymity. Well done, my friend!
—Peter Marti, 12 June 2021

I’ve been meaning to write since your reading, so forgive my sloth here. That reading was wonderful—I just loved it. I enjoyed hearing about the genesis of the book as a whole; these sort of Apollinairian projects sort of masquerade as "inartful," just writing down stuff you overhear, but I can tell that an incredible amount of thought went into the book's arrangement and it really has an effect. The hand of the master lurking behind the seemingly casual. I have to say, I like that you mixed in some poems from your voice/perspective as well; it really creates an interesting three corners among the things you overhear, the things that are said directly to you, and the things you write as observation. It could almost be said to be truer to the experience to mix your observational poems into work that other writers might keep separate from the collage work. 
—Garrett Caples, 16 June 2021

Delighted to get Taxi Night and watched, with delight!, Don Yorty's video. A pleasure being in the back of your cab.
—Charles Bernstein, 16 June 2021

A truly beautiful book. I read it cover to cover yesterday. What a great experience! It was like being in the cab with you. Thank you for sending it — and for writing it.
—Bill Morgan, 20 June 2021, White River Junction, VT

Hi Cliff! Thank you so much for sending me your book—I just love what I’ve read so far. It’s something totally presented from a new and compelllingly idiosyncratic POV—Congrats! I hope to see you around on the scene soon.
—Sanjay Agnihotri

Speaking of amazing, I finally read Taxi Night, and I think it's a classic. Thanks for sending, and for signing it in blue crayon.

I think it totally conveys the cab experience, especially in New York. Even for a work where most of the language is not originating from the writer, I think the lines are expertly edited and related. I love that you included your own asides ... which are certainly important in conveying that there is a relationship of some kind happening here. It would not be the same information without them.

 This is one of those rare books that gets to be multiple forms: poems, a kind of play as well, diaristic, and also conveys "the voice of the people,” which is rarely what a lot of poets and writers think it is when they are claiming it.

Anyways, it's been big weird time period and it feels like a small miracle to get anything done, including finishing a great book. 
—Edmund Berrigan, 25 October 2021

I’ve read Taxi Night several times, and each time I find new things to love. Fyman was an overnight cab driver in New York City off and on since the 1970s, and he captures the beauty, the humor, and the mundaness of those times perfectly. He has the vision of a true poet, yet I

didn’t feel like I was reading a “poem.” Instead, I was carried invisibly into the underside of NYC night-life; the drunken cab-rides home, the jazzed-up helpful hustlers, the bored club-girls. Overheard conversations that I would never have had a chance to hear. This book is truly a masterpiece.
—Maggie Dubris, 15 November 2021

If you're looking for poetry of everyday life, look no further. Cliff Fyman is an antenna and an alchemist, turning conversations overheard in his taxi into nimble little poems ranging from hilarious to sad and back. I'm going to watch what I say next time I get in a cab.
—Peter Cherches, Goodreads review, 16 Dec 2021