Synopses & Reviews
These are the collected poems of a master whose work includes many of the most compelling, savage, and tender poems in the language. Frederick Seidel is, in the words of the critic Adam Kirsch, “the best American poet writing today.”
Frederick Seidel's books of poetry include
Final Solutions;
Sunrise, winner of the Lamont Prize and the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award;
These Days;
My Tokyo;
Going Fast;
Area Code 212;
Life on Earth; and
The Cosmos Poems. He received the 2002 PEN/Voelker Award for Poetry. These are the collected poems of a master whose work includes many of the most compelling, savage, and tender poems in the language. Frederick Seidel is, in the words of the critic Adam Kirsch, “the best American poet writing today.”
"Many poets have been acquainted with the night; some have been intimate with it; and a handful have been so haunted and intoxicated by the darker side of existence that it can be hard to pick them out from the murk that surrounds them. As
Poems 1959-2009 demonstrates, Frederick Seidel has spent the last half-century being that darkest and strangest sort of poet . . . [Seidel's work] has only gotten better as hes gotten older, regardless of who or what has been paying attention to him . . . This combination of barbarity and grace is one of Seidels most remarkable technical achievements: hes like a violinist who pauses from bowing expertly through Paganinis
Caprice No. 24 to smash his instrument against the wall . . . When people claim to be 'shocked' by Seidels work, its not the actual content that disturbs themif youve seen
28 Weeks Later, youve seen worsebut rather these strange juxtapositions of artful and dreadful."
David Orr, The New York Times Book Review "Many poets have been acquainted with the night; some have been intimate with it; and a handful have been so haunted and intoxicated by the darker side of existence that it can be hard to pick them out from the murk that surrounds them. As Poems 1959-2009 demonstrates, Frederick Seidel has spent the last half-century being that darkest and strangest sort of poet. He is, its widely agreed, one of poetrys few truly scary characters. This is a reputation of which hes plainly aware and by which hes obviously amused, at least to judge from the nervy title of his 2006 book, Ooga-Booga. This perception also colors the praise his collections typically receiveto pick one example from many, Calvin Bedient admiringly describes him as 'the most frightening American poet ever,' which is a bit like calling someone 'historys most bloodthirsty clockmaker.' What is it about Seidel that bothers and excites everyone so much? The simplest answer is that hes an exhilarating and unsettling writer who is very good at saying things that can seem rather bad . . . Seidel is published by a major house and has enjoyed long, smart, immensely positive write-ups in at least three general-interest magazinesa grim fate for which most poets would happily sacrifice their children and possibly even their cats. Of course, none of this has much to do with Seidels actual work, which has only gotten better as hes gotten older, regardless of who or what has been paying attention to him . . . This combination of barbarity and grace is one of Seidels most remarkable technical achievements: hes like a violinist who pauses from bowing expertly through Paganinis Caprice No. 24 to smash his instrument against the wall . . . When people claim to be 'shocked' by Seidels work, its not the actual content that disturbs themif youve seen 28 Weeks Later, youve seen worsebut rather these strange juxtapositions of artful and dreadful. This is probably the reason he reminds some readers of Philip Larkin, with whom he otherwise has little in common. The anger that often motivates Larkins rapid shifts in diction and tone becomes in Seidel a rage that can destabilize the poem entirely. If anything, Seidel, born in 1936, has become less mellow as hes aged. A sampling of lines from the new poems gathered here under the title 'Evening Man:' 'I make her oink' (in reference to sex); 'My face had been sliced off / And lay there on the ground like a washcloth'; 'And the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said: / You have cancer. / Mary could not think how. / No man had been with her.' This is grim stuff, even when meant to be amusing. But what prevents Seidels work from being simply grotesque or decadentwhat makes it, in fact, anything but grotesque or decadentis his connection to the larger political universe. Adam Kirsch has observed that 'among contemporary poets, it is Seidels social interest that is really unusual.' This is exactly right, and the nature of Seidels social interest makes his work interesting in ways that the work of his closest peer, Sylvia Plath, often is not. Seidel and Plath are our most talented devotees of psychic violence, but whereas Plath co-opts the outside world to make her own obsessions burn hotter ('my skin, / Bright as a Nazi lampshade'), Seidel occupies a more ambiguous territory. Hes as likely to be possessed by events as to possess them ('Rank as the odor in urine / Of asparagus from the night before, / This is empire waking drunk, and remembering in the dark'). To be fair, Plath died young; no one knows how her work may have changed. Still, if the Plath we know is Lady Lazarus, the figure Seidel resembles most is the sin-eater, that old, odd and possibly apocryphal participant in folk funerals in Scotland and Wales. In the late 17th century, the Englishman John Aubrey described sin-eating like so: 'When the Corps was brought out of the house, and layd on the Biere, a Loafe of Breade was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the Corps . . . in consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) all of the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.' In Aubreys telling, the sin-eaters were poor people at societys margin, in particular 'a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal' who lived alone, presumably surrounded by the many sins he had spent a lifetime taking on. Frederick Seidel isnt poor, but its not hard to imagine him in that cottage at nightfall, looking half longingly, half contemptuously at the lights of the village while preparing for his lonely supper."David Orr, The New York Times Book Review
"Long regarded as a kind of elegant cult figure in poetry circles, Seidel has a reputation that precedes him into every room: decadent, name-dropper, sexual dalliant, Ducati enthusiast, son of privilege. This runs counter to the man himself. He doesn't do poetry readings and has, for the most part, shunned interviews. There is no doubt that Seidel is one of the best poets alive today, and now, with the release of Poems: 1959-2009, his collected works can be taken at their measure: They are haughty, funny and terrifying, with plenty of delicious contention throughout . . . Poems lines up his collections in reverse chronological order; Seidel has turned the telescope around, forcing us to peer back at the very beginning. In 1963's Final Solutions, it's startling how already practiced the young
Review
"Among the two or three finest poets writing in English." New York Magazine
Review
"One of the worlds most inspired and unusual poets." USA Today
Review
The book is like being a guest for a long season on an elegant estate, where your host is often a boastful, name-dropping connoisseur; dressed in the hand-cut cloth of tailor-made clothes with labels often deliberately on display, he descends, or ascends, to pour you a glass from a rare, vintaged bottle; only don't be surprised to find his fine wine has been laced with Spanish fly. For he is himself also the licentious servant, the one who smears his own august household with his ribald affairs; and Spanish fly is the least of it, for his silver servant's tray also bears mud, coal, coke, and excrement. The drawing room is soon corrupted, and since he has been reported to say he does not care what other people think of his poems perhaps he aims to shock himself with his own self-debasement." Jackson Taylor, The Brooklyn Rail (read the entire )
Synopsis
Cold drool on his chin, warm drool in his lap, a sigh, The bitterness of too many cigarettes
On his breath: portrait of the autist
Asleep in the arms of his armchair, age thirteen . . .
from ”A Dimpled Cloud” (1989)
In recent years Frederick Seidel has been acknowledged as one of the great poets of our time. Poems 1959–2009 gathers his nine original collections, from Final Solutions (1959) to Ooga- Booga (2007), together with his new, uncollected work. Poems 1959–2009 is a landmark in American poetry.
Synopsis
These are the collected poems of a master whose work includes many of the most compelling, savage, and tender poems in the language. Frederick Seidel is, in the words of the critic Adam Kirsch, “the best American poet writing today.”
About the Author
Frederick Seidel's previous collection,
Ooga-Booga, received the 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize.