Felix Stefanile

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Felix Stefanile Biography

Felix Stefanile was bom in 1920 in Long Island City, New York. He was educated in the public schools and at CCNY. A World War 11 veteran, he found employment after the war in a series of clerical jobs until 1950, when he began his eleven-year stint in the New York State Department of Labor. There he eventually became a middle functionary in worker's claims and entitlements.)

The Best Poem Of Felix Stefanile

Taking Sides With John Ciardi

When Robert Lowell hyphenated you-
Italian, hyphen sign, American-
to praise your poetry, your answer ran
in rough-house expletives. Your passion flew,
and subsequently in an interview
you squelched his harmless seeming little hyphen
as not the way to write out citizen.
How culture-vultures smiled at the to-do.

If this is poetry, as may be true,
it's also punctuation, not too thin
a point or line for morals that you drew.
We all know grammar can stick like a pin,
and those who think my point is overdrawn,
they are no friends of yours, nor of mine, John.

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