“Punk rock embroidered with an artist's eye for ironies and a pop culturist's fetish for detail, the personal life of Brian Fanelli gets the rock star treatment here, in twenty nine brutally honest renderings of his opened veins. For those who were part of the scene anywhere from the late eighties to the new millennium, these works will drop you in the mosh pit of frenzied, alienated youth. If Henry Rollins and Robert Frost collaborated, their song would sound like this.”
Christopher Reilley Grief Tattoos

“In tight lines of spin-kicked free verse, Brian Fanelli takes us into the language and culture of the punk-rock scene, eastern Pennsylvania, turn of the millennium. His small-town protagonist joins this second generation of agitated, tattooed youth with 'too-tight jeans, ratty Chucks, Elmer-glued Mohawks;' a world most of us have never inhabited. The poems delve deeply into individual scenes and deliver an emotionally-charged version of the punk-rock story. Open this book and prepare for a wild ride with power chords and smashed guitars, punches and combat boots to the face, mixed with pervasive nostalgia and self-knowledge that come from looking back at youth from the far side of maturity.”
Neil Shepard Editor of Green Mountains Review and author of This Far from the Source

“Brian Fanelli’s Front Man is a rattling, howling, dumpster diving, beer bottle-littered romp through the punk-rock infused world of Chucks, Mohawks, bloody noses and broken jaws. But it is also a tender, sober coming-of-age poetic narrative riffed in two-minute tracks that reminds the reader how close the profane echoes the sublime—and how that echo follows us, red-eyed and alive all the way to the exit.”
Tony Morris Back to Cain