Frederick Seidel

From the winner of the PEN/Voelker Award, poems of love, terror, rage, and desire. Here I am, not a practical man, But clear-eyed in my contact lenses, Following no doubt a slightly different line than the others, Seeking sexual pleasure above all else, Despairing of art and of life, Seeking protection from death by seeking it On a racebike, finding release and belief on two wheels . . . --from "The Death of the Shah" The poems in Ooga-Booga are about a youthful slave owner and his aging slave, and both are the same man. This is the tenderest, most savage collection yet from "the most frightening American poet ever" (Calvin Bedient, Boston Review).

Poems

Ooga-Booga

"You Can't Like Seidel's Poems--They're Deliberately Virulent; You Can Only Gasp At Their Skill And Daring, Their Sickening Warp, Their Mercilessness."* Frederick Seidel's highly acclaimed Cosmos Trilogy is a triple thunderclap of darkness from the poet whom Richard Poirier has recently called "the true heir of Walt Whitman" and of whose first book Robert Lowell wrote "[I] suspect the possibilities of modern poetry have been changed. Here is power that strikes." Reversing the course of Dante's Divine Comedy, Seidel's trilogy begins in the heavens, with The Cosmos Poems, and descends, passing through the Purgatorio of Life on Earth to arrive in Manhattan in Area Code 212.

The Cosmos Trilogy

Poems, 1959-2009

Widening Income Inequality

Poems 1959-1979

Going Fast

Poems consider Europe, espionage, the past, human sexuality, childhood, space, aging, and meaning

New Poems

These Days

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."

Poems 1959-2009

'Seidel grips the twentieth century between his teeth like a blade as he speaks. He is one of the more formidable poets of the last third of the century.' Calvin Bedient, Poetry 'He is scary, but funny, but scary. You would have go back to confessional masters like Lowell and Berryman to find poetry as daringly self-revealing, as risky and compelling, as the best of Frederick Seidel's.' Adam Kirsch, The New York Sun 'The moral thrills of his poetry can be as daunting as the moral spills, the cruel intelligence of glamour as alluring as the mystical stillness that is somewhere also at the heart of his poetry.' Adam Phillips, Raritan 'The poems in Ooga-Booga are the richest yet and read like no one else's: they're surreal, utterly unpretentious, and suffused with the peculiar American loneliness of Raymond Chandler. While I can think of a more likable book of poems, I can scarcely imagine a better one.' Alex Halberstadt, New York magazine 'Ooga-Booga is as beguiling and magisterial as anything Seidel has written. I can't decide whether he has more in common with Philip Larkin or John Ashbery, but the fact that Seidel can prompt such a bizarre question is more revealing than any possible answer.' The New York Times Book Review

Ooga-booga

My Tokyo, Frederick Seidel's fourth collection, brings together twenty-seven new poems by one of our most arresting writers. In Seidel's work, a passionate, uncompromising sensibility confronts the intractable reality of a turbulent world, a world of seductive glamour, harsh splendor, and cruelty. The strong rhetoric of the poems juxtaposes intense lyricism with a remorseless, cold-eyed skepticism. The results are consistently challenging, disturbing, and fiercely beautiful. Robert Lowell once wrote about this remarkable poet: "When I read him, I have envious, delighted, jolted feelings, and suspect the possibilities of modern poetry have been changed. Here is power that strikes".

My Tokyo

Sam Riviere

Kathryn Maris

Occasional Wild Parties brings together Sam Riviere, one of the most discussed of the new generation of British poets, whose 'post-internet' poetry sees him acting now as scribe, now as DJ, taking in everything from technologized romance to celebrity culture as filtered through Kim Kardashian's make-up routine; the 'elegant ghoul' Frederick Seidel, zooming through the dark underbelly of international high society on his Ducati racing bike; and the wonderfully observant Kathryn Maris, whose work ranges with a dark wit over incomprehensible deities, wayward mothers, the politics of children's sports contests, and psychoanalysis. All three lift the lid on their corners of civilized society to show the less glittering realities that lie just beneath the surface. "On the verge of perpetrating acts of artistic barbarism "I perceived a spoon as the title of a plate of food" - SAM RIVIERE, 'Mindfulness' "Deer garter-belt across our vision And stand there waiting for our decision. "Our only decision was how to cook the venison. I am civilized but I see the silence And write the words for the thought balloon." - FREDERICK SEIDEL, 'Kill Poem' "The man in the basement wrote stories about heroin. The woman in the attic read stories with heroines. The woman in the attic noticed a bruise that ran from the top to the base of her thigh. The bruise looked like Europe. The man in the basement was in love with the sister of the secretive man who loved him more. He whooped to the woman, 'You killed your student?' To himself he wept, 'I killed my father.'" - KATHRYN MARIS, 'The House with Only an Attic and a Basement'

Occasional Wild Parties

Penguin Modern Poets 5

This is the End of Days. This is what we've been waiting for always. I walked over to the Hudson River, heading for Mars. Each poem of mine is a suicide belt. I say that to my girlfriend Life. Peaches Goes It Alone, Frederick Seidel's newest collection of poems, begins with global warming and ends with Aphrodite. In between is everything. Peaches Goes It Alone presents the sexual and political themes that have long preoccupied Seidel-and thrilled and offended his readers. Lyrical, grotesque, and elegiac, Peaches Goes It Alone adds new music and menace to Seidel's masterful body of work.

Frederick Seidel

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