Frederick Seidel

21st Century Poet

LIT 2030 Summer 2007Rachel Brooks

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

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.

“To The Muse”

I’d 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.

“To The Muse”, Cont.

Which when he rose he folded neatlyAnd carried to the trash basket near the corner.Across the street where Mortimer’s outside tables set for

lunch.Now the maitre d’ was seating an early customer,

While a woman pushing a shopping cartPicked through the trash in the trash basket the man had

used,And the butler finally came backTo the phone to say you had gone.

Why Frederick Seidel?

“Professor Jones, I don’t know where to start!”

“Try Poets.org,” she said.

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

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