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Poems 1959-2009 (2009)

by Frederick Seidel(Favorite Author)

4.33 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0374126550 (ISBN13: 9780374126551)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: While it would probably make him produce “cow flops on the floor,” as Seidel writes in one of his many recent, disgust-filled poems about aging (especially as that process involves women), I find him perhaps the most adorably tonic current toilers in the art. Our reader-friendly age, as though by Pavlovian response, has come to bestow its highest praise on writers deemed “compassionate” and “empathetic,” as well as those whose risk-taking and “transgressiveness” involves a stage of promiscuous slumming or stealing Percocets from their parents’ medicine cabinets. What could be more genuinely transgressive than lines describing femmes beyond d’un certain age, when naked, as “just a total nightmare,” speaking casually of privilege that allows for a... more wardrobe of bespoke suits and accessories such as Ducati motorcycles? And yet Seidel’s first two books, FINAL SOLUTION and SUNRISE, reprinted here, are the ones to which I found myself returning. These collections’ poems are more expansive and tend to be longer, while some of his most recent work--though much of it remains beautifully crafted, in perfect Baudelairean counterpoint to its purposefully hideous subject matter--has seemed more like jottings or notes for finished pieces. The earlier “Scotland,” “The Blue-Eyed Doe,” and “Wanting to Live in Harlem” are masterpieces of contemporary writing, however much Seidel has derided the spell Lowell cast upon them, a spell under which he has said he still writes. But Lowell never moved as elliptically or subtly through a nation’s love of violence as Seidel does in “Scotland,” with its love of shooting parties (an ontological contradiction?) and “blood-pud,” or wrote with as much detached--oh, dear, here comes that word--compassion about either of his parents: “The Blue-Eyed Doe,” about Seidel’s emotionally disturbed mother, is heart-breaking. For the most part, however, he remains happily easy to dislike. Is Seidel the one poet of our time who has actually received death threats? In any event, the risks he takes are genuine, and he has, thus far, survived them all.(originally published in ANTIOCH REVIEW)
review 2: I've enjoyed dipping into this volume ever since a friend of mine -- a devoted but not academic poet -- brought Frederick Seidel ("the Laureate of the Louches," as an excellent NYTimes Magazine portrait of Seidel put it a few years ago) to my attention. Seidel is intelligent and entertaining. Robert Lowell heralded his first book as the best book of poetry published in the U.S. in decades. That was long ago, of course (1970s?), so you might ask, what happened to the guy? Well, he's kept writing and living in NYC, but few have noticed his gifts. Very few poets excite me like this. I'm glad Steve passed it along. less

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