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So What: Poems
A bristling, beautiful new collection from “the Dark Prince of American Poetry” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times ).
In So What , Frederick Seidel writes of speeding his racetrack-only Superbike across the island of Manhattan, “illegal river to river, wap wap wap WOW!” The poet hurtles toward the tenth decade of his life and into the sixth decade of his lightning-rod career, but the path from youth to old age is not a straight one. Throughout this book, Seidel smashes the boundaries of youth and age against each other and stirs up a surge of shotguns and wristwatches, late-blooming love and sex, and flashes of the naked face of American life. At its crest stands the poet, looking over the wreckage and creation, and he so what.
In So What , Frederick Seidel writes of speeding his racetrack-only Superbike across the island of Manhattan, “illegal river to river, wap wap wap WOW!” The poet hurtles toward the tenth decade of his life and into the sixth decade of his lightning-rod career, but the path from youth to old age is not a straight one. Throughout this book, Seidel smashes the boundaries of youth and age against each other and stirs up a surge of shotguns and wristwatches, late-blooming love and sex, and flashes of the naked face of American life. At its crest stands the poet, looking over the wreckage and creation, and he so what.
- GenresPoetry
160 pages, Hardcover
Published June 25, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 28, 2024
Strange to think of Fred as a wildly anti-Trump, MSNBC-totebag liberal. But there he is, saying the things you’ve heard about the orange man for a decade or near it as if they were fresh.
It appalled me—is that the right verb? Well, it’s honest—that Fred hasn’t gotten a really excited, this-guy-is-literally-the-greatest New York Times review in—well, ever. Now here he is, feted. Will normies, will goddam wokesters get that here is the greatest living writer? This collection, more than any of the recent ones…well, to grab a cruelly apropos bit of slang from the zoomers….it slaps.
It appalled me—is that the right verb? Well, it’s honest—that Fred hasn’t gotten a really excited, this-guy-is-literally-the-greatest New York Times review in—well, ever. Now here he is, feted. Will normies, will goddam wokesters get that here is the greatest living writer? This collection, more than any of the recent ones…well, to grab a cruelly apropos bit of slang from the zoomers….it slaps.
March 27, 2024
Frederick Seidel, when I read his Poems 1959-2009, a few years ago, almost immediately, became one of my favorite poets. In a consumer society while most poets rage against capitalism, wealth, and materialism, Seidel born into wealth, writes with a boyish innocence of his adult toys, the women he’s known, the places he’s traveled, and the famous people he’s met, with unabashed joy, a highly translatable joy, and I loved him for it. You can find him in the grand hotels of New York City and speeding down Italian autobahns, guest of a member of the Ducati family. Seidel owns several expensive high end Ducati motorcycles which he rides through his poems.
At nineteen years old, he met Ezra Pound. When Allen Ginsberg met Pound, he asked him to identity some of his Italian place references in The Cantos. The young Seidel went Ginsberg one better, not knowing a word of Chinese, he convinced Pound to change some of his Chinese poems. Seidel was past seventy-three years old, when I first read his poems. What struck me about his poetry is that he seemed to have read everyone, past and present, within the tradition. At eighty-eight, his recognizable influences are fewer. As writers mature, Influences are usually subsumed, hidden within the text, for the most part, recognized by seasoned readers. Seidel in this volume appears to have intentionally divested his work of influences and much of his playfulness, evident by his chosen forms, short poems, easy rhymes, and his tone, forgoing his earlier rigor of content. If I were stumbling on his work for the first time, I would believe he lacked poetic tradition, not even giving him a pass for perhaps dabbling in free form and experimental verse.
But approached as divestiture, the gains accrue in his past work, leaving him just enough poetic wealth for personal use. Traces of his verve of language, his poetic forms, whimsical and playful, remain. A couple of his page long poems are in this volume, speeding along without a care in the world. If mastery, in this case the mastery of poetry, is wealth, Seidel is wealthy. To enjoy one’s wealth in a manner that brings smiles and laughter to the faces of others, at least in the arts, is a real and true gift. Read this volume, but also accept his previous work.
Thank you to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for an advanced reader’s copy.
At nineteen years old, he met Ezra Pound. When Allen Ginsberg met Pound, he asked him to identity some of his Italian place references in The Cantos. The young Seidel went Ginsberg one better, not knowing a word of Chinese, he convinced Pound to change some of his Chinese poems. Seidel was past seventy-three years old, when I first read his poems. What struck me about his poetry is that he seemed to have read everyone, past and present, within the tradition. At eighty-eight, his recognizable influences are fewer. As writers mature, Influences are usually subsumed, hidden within the text, for the most part, recognized by seasoned readers. Seidel in this volume appears to have intentionally divested his work of influences and much of his playfulness, evident by his chosen forms, short poems, easy rhymes, and his tone, forgoing his earlier rigor of content. If I were stumbling on his work for the first time, I would believe he lacked poetic tradition, not even giving him a pass for perhaps dabbling in free form and experimental verse.
But approached as divestiture, the gains accrue in his past work, leaving him just enough poetic wealth for personal use. Traces of his verve of language, his poetic forms, whimsical and playful, remain. A couple of his page long poems are in this volume, speeding along without a care in the world. If mastery, in this case the mastery of poetry, is wealth, Seidel is wealthy. To enjoy one’s wealth in a manner that brings smiles and laughter to the faces of others, at least in the arts, is a real and true gift. Read this volume, but also accept his previous work.
Thank you to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for an advanced reader’s copy.
June 23, 2024
〝the four racing motorcycles I own snore
on their stands on a dallas showroom floor.
my ducati desmosedici, my ducati supermono,
my superleggera, my 999, roar no more.
alas, I have to sell them because I have to
give up going vastly fast because
I'm eighty-four.
every morning when I shave
is one step closer to my grave.〞
★★
thank you to farrar, straus and giroux and netgalley for providing me with this arc.
in this collection seidel writes of speeding his racetrack-only superbike across the island of manhattan. the poet hurtles toward the tenth decade of his life and into the sixth decade of his lightning-rod career, but the path from youth to old age is not a straight one. throughout this book, seidel smashes the boundaries of youth and age against each other and stirs up a surge of shotguns and wristwatches, late-blooming love and sex, and flashes of the naked face of american life. at its crest stands the poet, looking over the wreckage and creation, and he proclaims: so what.
while it was an interesting reflection on age and fun to see an older person still creating art and being able to to what he loves; this collection wasn't really for me. if I'd read some of his earlier works before I might've been more interested in this and been able to get more out of the collection but since this was my first time reading something of his all the callbacks and history went right over my head. the poems themselves were also not in a style I typically prefer. as I've said many times before, I prefer poems with a clear rhythm, and while there were some in here, a lot of them felt more talkative and like I was reading normal sentences. it was really interesting though to read an older poet writing in a style that I heavily associate with modern poetry, especially poetry published in the last ten to twelve years.
if you want something combining the personality and themes of a collection by charles bukowski with the rhythm and style of modern poetry; this is the collection for you, it just wasn't the collection for me.
ig: @winterrainreads
on their stands on a dallas showroom floor.
my ducati desmosedici, my ducati supermono,
my superleggera, my 999, roar no more.
alas, I have to sell them because I have to
give up going vastly fast because
I'm eighty-four.
every morning when I shave
is one step closer to my grave.〞
★★
thank you to farrar, straus and giroux and netgalley for providing me with this arc.
in this collection seidel writes of speeding his racetrack-only superbike across the island of manhattan. the poet hurtles toward the tenth decade of his life and into the sixth decade of his lightning-rod career, but the path from youth to old age is not a straight one. throughout this book, seidel smashes the boundaries of youth and age against each other and stirs up a surge of shotguns and wristwatches, late-blooming love and sex, and flashes of the naked face of american life. at its crest stands the poet, looking over the wreckage and creation, and he proclaims: so what.
while it was an interesting reflection on age and fun to see an older person still creating art and being able to to what he loves; this collection wasn't really for me. if I'd read some of his earlier works before I might've been more interested in this and been able to get more out of the collection but since this was my first time reading something of his all the callbacks and history went right over my head. the poems themselves were also not in a style I typically prefer. as I've said many times before, I prefer poems with a clear rhythm, and while there were some in here, a lot of them felt more talkative and like I was reading normal sentences. it was really interesting though to read an older poet writing in a style that I heavily associate with modern poetry, especially poetry published in the last ten to twelve years.
if you want something combining the personality and themes of a collection by charles bukowski with the rhythm and style of modern poetry; this is the collection for you, it just wasn't the collection for me.
ig: @winterrainreads
October 21, 2024
Seidel is an acquired taste, and I'm not sure I've acquired that taste just yet. Some poets I know really like him. I find him mostly quirky, often outrageous, and sometimes quite funny. Seidel (who is quite rich) is now well into his 80s, so this collection finds him mostly wistful for old friends long gone, a beloved and missed dog, expensive shotguns, and racing motorcycles (those last two amusements probably being beyond his aged self). The best poems are his political ones ("Tump" (Trump) is savage and funny as hell). There is also one poem dedicated to Nick Cave (who Seidel apparently knows and likes) which I thought really cool. Poetry's bad boy may be getting on in years, but he retains a sharp edge and caustic wit.
June 10, 2024
Uneven but brilliant
June 12, 2025
Seidel going boomer lib mode (which is charming in his way) interspersed with some truly great and vulnerable bits about aging and dying. What’s not to like here
February 2, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!
It’s a bold move to open a collection with a declaration of poetry’s uselessness, but that is exactly what Frederick Seidel does in the titular “So What.”
The poem is not so much a rejection as it is a reframing—how are beauty and art and war and violence in such close and profane proximity? Despite this fascinating premise, So What rarely moves beyond treating poetry like an artistic exercise.
There are still thematic contours here, though. This is a collection concerned with hindsight and mortality. The speaker in these poems often pulls apart notions of aging gracefully through wistful, sing-songy rhymes that are tinted with shades of irony and nostalgia in equal measure.
Many of these poems recycle lines in a way that feels redundant more than iterative, as if the speaker doesn’t recall saying the exact same thing a few poems before. It’s almost unsettling, and it invites the reader to wrestle with whether these pieces are littered or decorated with the detritus of memory. To be perfectly blunt, the former seems true as Seidel repeatedly critiques Donald Trump’s presidency in a way that feels both self-congratulatory and anachronistic. In 2016, it was vital; in 2024, it's embarrassing. I am not sure what art can offer us when it merely repeats an opinion most of us share.
While I can aesthetically appreciate the collection, I found myself otherwise unmoved. It’s possibly a matter of taste, but to me, this reads like poetry as pure object—it is disengaged from any of the conflicts or tensions it namedrops, and what could be considered austerity feels more like sterility. For a collection that eschews meaning in its opening, this book spends a great deal of time acting with the tacit assumption that poetry is the only force powerful enough to change politics. As such, aestheticized violence becomes the collection’s guiding impulse—world events via newspaper clippings over Saturday morning coffee in a brownstone.
Poetry as politic is nothing new, so it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the tone rings disingenuous here, but I’ll try my best:
The world of So What is one that the speaker never participates in; he only consumes it.
One could make the argument that this is all part of a grand artistic vision to comment on our personal relationship with history, but the book’s length and general self-indulgence (most prominent in “A Matched Pair of Purdeys,” in which Seidel’s name appears alongside many literary greats) suggest a self-mythology that has been accepted as truth—a provocateur who no longer has anything to say about the world he inhabits.
It’s a bold move to open a collection with a declaration of poetry’s uselessness, but that is exactly what Frederick Seidel does in the titular “So What.”
The poem is not so much a rejection as it is a reframing—how are beauty and art and war and violence in such close and profane proximity? Despite this fascinating premise, So What rarely moves beyond treating poetry like an artistic exercise.
There are still thematic contours here, though. This is a collection concerned with hindsight and mortality. The speaker in these poems often pulls apart notions of aging gracefully through wistful, sing-songy rhymes that are tinted with shades of irony and nostalgia in equal measure.
Many of these poems recycle lines in a way that feels redundant more than iterative, as if the speaker doesn’t recall saying the exact same thing a few poems before. It’s almost unsettling, and it invites the reader to wrestle with whether these pieces are littered or decorated with the detritus of memory. To be perfectly blunt, the former seems true as Seidel repeatedly critiques Donald Trump’s presidency in a way that feels both self-congratulatory and anachronistic. In 2016, it was vital; in 2024, it's embarrassing. I am not sure what art can offer us when it merely repeats an opinion most of us share.
While I can aesthetically appreciate the collection, I found myself otherwise unmoved. It’s possibly a matter of taste, but to me, this reads like poetry as pure object—it is disengaged from any of the conflicts or tensions it namedrops, and what could be considered austerity feels more like sterility. For a collection that eschews meaning in its opening, this book spends a great deal of time acting with the tacit assumption that poetry is the only force powerful enough to change politics. As such, aestheticized violence becomes the collection’s guiding impulse—world events via newspaper clippings over Saturday morning coffee in a brownstone.
Poetry as politic is nothing new, so it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the tone rings disingenuous here, but I’ll try my best:
The world of So What is one that the speaker never participates in; he only consumes it.
One could make the argument that this is all part of a grand artistic vision to comment on our personal relationship with history, but the book’s length and general self-indulgence (most prominent in “A Matched Pair of Purdeys,” in which Seidel’s name appears alongside many literary greats) suggest a self-mythology that has been accepted as truth—a provocateur who no longer has anything to say about the world he inhabits.
August 6, 2024
Ah, I finally read some of Seidel's poetry. Interesting.
Perhaps because the poet is now well into his eighth decade, the navel-gazing inherent to poetry is of a different level. The man talks of aging, politics, and his motorcycles, now unused.
This collection was kind of middle of the road for me, didn't love or hate it. But I did very much appreciate that Seidel took the effort to rhyme some of his poetry, the way one is supposed to. Maybe it's because he's old enough to remember the rules or the format (rhyme and rhythm before the lazy modern stylings cut it down to rhythm alone), but it's nice, reads nicer.
At 160 pages, somewhat hefty for a poetry collection and an interesting read.
Perhaps because the poet is now well into his eighth decade, the navel-gazing inherent to poetry is of a different level. The man talks of aging, politics, and his motorcycles, now unused.
This collection was kind of middle of the road for me, didn't love or hate it. But I did very much appreciate that Seidel took the effort to rhyme some of his poetry, the way one is supposed to. Maybe it's because he's old enough to remember the rules or the format (rhyme and rhythm before the lazy modern stylings cut it down to rhythm alone), but it's nice, reads nicer.
At 160 pages, somewhat hefty for a poetry collection and an interesting read.
April 30, 2024
Seidel's poetry is not for everyone and this new collection, finding him contemplating his old age and railing against Trump, is probably not going to win him any new fans. His playfulness and humor are very evident and love affair with Ducati motorcycles and the opulence of contemporary life goes on.
[I received an advanced e-galley from Netgalley.]
[I received an advanced e-galley from Netgalley.]
July 20, 2024
Frederick Sly-del is still pumping out sick rhymes and utilizes imagery that slays! He discusses NYC living, his love for motorcycles, cultural moments, COVID, and politics. Most of all, he isn't afraid to tell it how it is and just to make sure you get the message, he echoes some of the same lines through the book. Be warned, this collection is not for the faint of heart! 😨
August 31, 2024
3.5
Sometimes, you just need an exorbitantly wealthy borderline nonegenarian to make you laugh about white guilt and the collapse of America/the globe. Excited to go back into Seidel's back catalog and read him when he holds his punches even less.
Sometimes, you just need an exorbitantly wealthy borderline nonegenarian to make you laugh about white guilt and the collapse of America/the globe. Excited to go back into Seidel's back catalog and read him when he holds his punches even less.
October 13, 2024
I’ve been a fan of Seidel’s work for a long time. This volume unfortunately suffers from a persistent case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews