Helena Nelson and Hilary Menos discuss the highs and lows of Frederick Seidel, and take a look at his latest collection, 'So What' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024; Faber, 2025).
I didn't know Seidel's work, there's a lot I don't know, but very much enjoyed your to and fro about this latest collection and other work by him. Despite your only occasional smile in his direction and your mutual repulsion, your comments have induced me to want to buy a copy, just to see for myself. So thanks for that. Best, EB
I think you have his number here. Ten years ago I thought Seidel was important and exciting. He was always in the LRB, which was the kind of thing I cared about: that dynamic partly explains why you don't find anyone criticising him, people want to seem 'in the know'. I still think he sometimes pulls it off, when he's vulnerable or really commits to an image. I enjoy the way he breaks form, but sometimes it's just ugly. And yes that constant need to shock gets tiring and usually ruins the poems. I don't have any desire to read them anymore.
The only poem I remember liking by Seidel is a very short one about “timeless, date-stamped Fred Astaire” (if I have that right.) But I don’t think *liking* is the point. It seems pretty clear that all those jarringly mechanical and anti-lyrical rhymes and images are deliberate, the clunkiness and outrageousness part of the technique. I found Michael Hofmann’s article on Seidel (a review of his Collected, available on the Poetry Foundation website) illuminating, even if I can’t share his enthusiasm for the poet he describes, approvingly, as ‘a meat-slicing machine.’
Here’s a sample:
[quote]
Conditioned to the sort of poetry where the poet tries hard to be precisely the “bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast,” readers are no longer able to understand what happens when—in the rest of the Yeats tag—a phantasmagoria imposes itself. Lines like these, that come from a catalog of historical and cultural possibilities, from tall tales, from sprezzatura, from an exuberant, nettling Byronism, are read dully, literally, confessionally, and of course come out sounding merely obnoxious:
“Combine a far-seeing industrialist. With an Islamic fundamentalist. With an Italian premier who doesn’t take bribes. With a pharmaceuticals CEO who loves to spread disease. Put them on a 916.
And you get Fred Seidel.”
It’s important to understand that the poet is not in the lines. We’re not talking advanced self-scrutiny and truth-telling here. The lines are stuff, material, mortadella, it doesn’t greatly matter. The poet is the meat-slicing machine.
Am a huge Seidel 🪭- I think 'Hymn to Aphrodite' is really gracious. One of my favourite love poems.
When he writes at his best, which is not always, there is not a contemporary poet who gets anywhere near him. I will even forgive him the fussy rhyme schemes. ‘Wanting to live in Harlem’ has so many layers.
I didn't know Seidel's work, there's a lot I don't know, but very much enjoyed your to and fro about this latest collection and other work by him. Despite your only occasional smile in his direction and your mutual repulsion, your comments have induced me to want to buy a copy, just to see for myself. So thanks for that. Best, EB
I think you have his number here. Ten years ago I thought Seidel was important and exciting. He was always in the LRB, which was the kind of thing I cared about: that dynamic partly explains why you don't find anyone criticising him, people want to seem 'in the know'. I still think he sometimes pulls it off, when he's vulnerable or really commits to an image. I enjoy the way he breaks form, but sometimes it's just ugly. And yes that constant need to shock gets tiring and usually ruins the poems. I don't have any desire to read them anymore.
The only poem I remember liking by Seidel is a very short one about “timeless, date-stamped Fred Astaire” (if I have that right.) But I don’t think *liking* is the point. It seems pretty clear that all those jarringly mechanical and anti-lyrical rhymes and images are deliberate, the clunkiness and outrageousness part of the technique. I found Michael Hofmann’s article on Seidel (a review of his Collected, available on the Poetry Foundation website) illuminating, even if I can’t share his enthusiasm for the poet he describes, approvingly, as ‘a meat-slicing machine.’
Here’s a sample:
[quote]
Conditioned to the sort of poetry where the poet tries hard to be precisely the “bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast,” readers are no longer able to understand what happens when—in the rest of the Yeats tag—a phantasmagoria imposes itself. Lines like these, that come from a catalog of historical and cultural possibilities, from tall tales, from sprezzatura, from an exuberant, nettling Byronism, are read dully, literally, confessionally, and of course come out sounding merely obnoxious:
“Combine a far-seeing industrialist. With an Islamic fundamentalist. With an Italian premier who doesn’t take bribes. With a pharmaceuticals CEO who loves to spread disease. Put them on a 916.
And you get Fred Seidel.”
It’s important to understand that the poet is not in the lines. We’re not talking advanced self-scrutiny and truth-telling here. The lines are stuff, material, mortadella, it doesn’t greatly matter. The poet is the meat-slicing machine.
[end quote]
Where's the skill in being bad? Which took the longer the poem or the hand-shandy...does he write pen in one hand todger in the other?
An interesting read - thank you.
Am a huge Seidel 🪭- I think 'Hymn to Aphrodite' is really gracious. One of my favourite love poems.
When he writes at his best, which is not always, there is not a contemporary poet who gets anywhere near him. I will even forgive him the fussy rhyme schemes. ‘Wanting to live in Harlem’ has so many layers.
Bon weekend ! Charlie ;)