Frederick Seidel

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Frederick Seidel

• 21st Century Poet
• LIT 2030 Summer 2007Rachel Brooks

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Biography

• Born February 19, 1936 in St. Louis, MO
• Earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard
  University in 1957
• Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle
  Award and for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize
• Awards include Lamont Poetry Prize and a
  PEN/Voelcker Award

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Works

• Ooga-Booga 2006
• Life on Earth 2001
• The Cosmos Poems 2000
• Going Fast 1998
• My Tokyo 1993
• These Days 1989
• Poems, 1959-1979 1989
• Et al.

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To The Muse

• Id had a haircut at Molé,
• I called you from the first payphone that worked,
• You were high above Park Avenue,
• Having damask troubles in their library.
• I saw the man approaching not see me.
• I held the phone and heard the servants getting
  you.
• I watched him squat in the street near the curb
  while the traffic passed,
• Spreading under himself sheets of newspaper

Cont.
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To The Muse, Cont.

• Which when he rose he folded neatly
• And carried to the trash basket near the corner.
• Across the street where Mortimers outside tables
  set for lunch.
• Now the maitre d was seating an early customer,
• While a woman pushing a shopping cart
• Picked through the trash in the trash basket the
  man had used,
• And the butler finally came back
• To the phone to say you had gone.

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Why Frederick Seidel?

• Professor Jones, I dont know where to start!
• Try Poets.org, she said.

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Poets.Org

• Seidel's brutal and fearless work is frequently
  described in terms that are simultaneously praise
  and censure, depending on perspective, and often
  conflated with speculations about his notorious
  wealth, Italian motorcycles, and famous friends.
  "A violent misogynist, or an elegant seducer, or
  both?" asks Adam Kirsch in The New Republic.

Poets.Org 22 May 2007
Misogynist one who hates women
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The Contemporary Poetic Scene

• Brash, opinionated topics
• Edgy, abstract rhythms
• Use of real-life, modern metaphors
• Exposure of connections between ideas that do not
  necessarily relate
• Courage to write about controversial or private
  matters