Selected Poems of Frederick Seidel

Description

This new selection of the poetry of Frederick Seidel celebrates the career of an American original, and introduces one of the most remarkable contemporary poets to English readers. Seidel writes about the present state of things, both public and private, with inspired malice, brio, and disabused omniscience, and his work has matured over the course of a dozen books into an encyclopaedia of modern atmospheres. As Richard Poirier has noted, 'his words come at us as if spontaneously provoked into being by the volatile realities he is discovering. His poems celebrate themselves, and their author, in a manner that makes him the true heir of Walt Whitman. It is as if the poems emerge from what can be recognised as our future.'

Born in St Louis in 1936, Frederick Seidel has written eight volumes of poetry; Final Solutions, Sunrise, These Days, Poems 1959-1979, MyTokyo, Going Fast, The Cosmos Trilogy and Life on Earth. In 2002 he was awarded the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.

"'Hide your lyricals, your tenders: Frederick Seidel is coming. Ogre to what used to be called (without a sneer) sentiment, grim beyond Gothic contrivance, the most frightening American ever - phallus-man, hangman of political barbarism - Seidel is the poet the century deserved. Dip a stick into the twentieth century and it comes up dripping the sort of sludge Seidel has had the courage never to forget to taste, word by word. He lurks around like an ugly conscience. His artistry is justly fierce. He has bound one resource of modern poetry, vernacular speech, in a smoking sheath.' Calvin Bedient, Boston Review"