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Ooga-Booga
From the winner of the PEN/Voelker Award, poems of love, terror,
rage, and desire.
rage, and desire.
But clear-eyed in my contact lenses,
Following no doubt a slightly different line than the others,
Seeking sexual pleasure above all else,
Despairing of art and of life,
Seeking protection from death by seeking it
On a racebike, finding release and belief on two wheels . . .
—from ”The Death of the Shah”
The poems in Ooga-Booga are about a youthful slave owner and his aging slave, and both are the same man. This is the tenderest, most savage collection yet from “the most frightening American poet ever” (Calvin Bedient, Boston Review).
112 pages, Paperback
First published November 14, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
October 19, 2008
I've had this book a week and it has already saved my life 37 times. I am so tickled I have had to remove my wig. As we Americans say, "Thank you sooooo much."
October 3, 2016
After finishing this book, I started to read Seidel's bio. I stopped when I got to the second paragraph where it said he suggested corrections to Ezra Pound's translation of Confucius despite not understanding the Chinese language. My gut says that's all you need to know about him.
I didn't understand much of this book and yet you can feel the language. It punches you or taunts you or just dances around in choreographed numbers so offbeat that you reread lines to see if they were put together with actual letters or just broken rocks. Incongruous. Bawdy. Sometimes romantically materialistic. Every time your mind feels like it's just found the downbeat, Seidel changes the time signature. He poems in sentences. Short, staccato-like statements. Baffling yet moth-to-the-flame alluring. This is the kind of writer you love to hate or hate to love.
A lot of the allure (for me) was the way his ideas sort of build on themselves, layered tangentially but taking you just slightly left (or right) of where you're expecting them to go. For instance, in "On Being Debonair" he writes of the moon:
He'll throw in what appear to be ridiculously simplistic rhymes in the middle of stanzas or repeat a line or word with slight changes that again build to something more or jolt you just off course... of course, just enough to keep you interested. But then it's never about you the reader--the writing always seems dedicated to itself--the pursuit of an idea, the play of the words. Or he'll let the reader's mind complete a thought like in this stanza from "The Death of the Shah":
Some of my favorites from this slim collection:
- "Homage to Pessoa"
- "Fog"
- "E-mail from an Owl"
- "East Hampton Airport"
- "To Die For"
- "Barbados"
- "Organized Religion"
- "Cassanova Getting Older"
I'll leave you with one of the more disturbing but poignant pieces.
THE BLACK-EYED VIRGINS
A terrorist rides the rails underwater
From one language to another in a packed train of London
Rugby fans on their way to the big match in Paris
And a flock of Japanese schoolgirls ready to be fucked
In their school uniforms in paradise.
This is all just after Madrid in the reign of terror.
This is the girls' first trip outside Japan.
The terrorist swings in the hammock of their small skirts and black socks.
The chunnel train stops in the tunnel with an announcement
That everyone now alive is already human remains.
The terrorists have seen to it that trains
Swap human body parts around with bombs.
The Japanese schoolgirls say so sorry.
Their new public hair is made of light.
----------------------------------------
NEW WORD I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:
pseudocyesis
I didn't understand much of this book and yet you can feel the language. It punches you or taunts you or just dances around in choreographed numbers so offbeat that you reread lines to see if they were put together with actual letters or just broken rocks. Incongruous. Bawdy. Sometimes romantically materialistic. Every time your mind feels like it's just found the downbeat, Seidel changes the time signature. He poems in sentences. Short, staccato-like statements. Baffling yet moth-to-the-flame alluring. This is the kind of writer you love to hate or hate to love.
A lot of the allure (for me) was the way his ideas sort of build on themselves, layered tangentially but taking you just slightly left (or right) of where you're expecting them to go. For instance, in "On Being Debonair" he writes of the moon:
"I like the way she speaks to me.
Everything about me is bespoke."
And then the next stanza pulls you to a dissonant description of place:
"The desert this time of year
Is troops in desert camouflage."
He'll throw in what appear to be ridiculously simplistic rhymes in the middle of stanzas or repeat a line or word with slight changes that again build to something more or jolt you just off course... of course, just enough to keep you interested. But then it's never about you the reader--the writing always seems dedicated to itself--the pursuit of an idea, the play of the words. Or he'll let the reader's mind complete a thought like in this stanza from "The Death of the Shah":
"The future of psychoanalysis
Is a psychology of surface.
Stay on the outside side.
My poor analyst
Suffered a stroke and became a needy child.
As to the inner life: let the maid."
Some of my favorites from this slim collection:
- "Homage to Pessoa"
- "Fog"
- "E-mail from an Owl"
- "East Hampton Airport"
- "To Die For"
- "Barbados"
- "Organized Religion"
- "Cassanova Getting Older"
I'll leave you with one of the more disturbing but poignant pieces.
THE BLACK-EYED VIRGINS
A terrorist rides the rails underwater
From one language to another in a packed train of London
Rugby fans on their way to the big match in Paris
And a flock of Japanese schoolgirls ready to be fucked
In their school uniforms in paradise.
This is all just after Madrid in the reign of terror.
This is the girls' first trip outside Japan.
The terrorist swings in the hammock of their small skirts and black socks.
The chunnel train stops in the tunnel with an announcement
That everyone now alive is already human remains.
The terrorists have seen to it that trains
Swap human body parts around with bombs.
The Japanese schoolgirls say so sorry.
Their new public hair is made of light.
----------------------------------------
NEW WORD I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:
pseudocyesis
June 5, 2024
I would've liked to've liked this book more
Than I did but it lacked a rapport
With me though I'll forgive it that and I'm forgiving
It, (for the hours it took hardly need reliving)
Recommended as it was by a pal and poet
Who loves the book and staked our friendship on it
Or did he? I forget but it isn't important
What's important here is that I only half-liked it
You see, I don't mean to be prudish or rudish or a boor
But I would've liked to've liked this book a bit more
Than I did and I'll tell you why, not that you care
And I'll example it as well because, well, I'm debonair
Silly rhyme? Well, yeah, but Seidel uses it twice
By my count but my count could be off so thrice
Might be better to advance the cause of my
Discomfortable reactions towards the words he
Rhymes and sometimes doesn't rhyme or occasionally
Rhymes within the lines or even more occasionally
Makes his rhymes rhyme identically
But I'm nitpicking here though I didn't hate it
And I'd hate it to sound like I'm here to berate it
Its rhymes and its rhythms and its schemes
And its lines torn from headlines
On Bush and Iraq and other such themes
Like the bombings in London and also Madrid
And what our government's done and the evil it's did
(I'm so glad it was published before hurricane Katrina
So as to spare us a poem within that sad arena)
But he did, for some reason that I can't even fathom
Rhyme China with vagina like I did when I was seven
I'm picking nits again because it's easy for me
To not understand the brilliance I see
On the page and I'm humbled by the blurbs I read
On its back cover written, I imagine, by men
Who have jobs and taste and acumen
Who said things on this book which sound a bit out of bounds
For a poet who exclaims in at least one poem, Zounds!
Am I picky? I am. No really, really I am
And I have no talent but honest I am
Not hating this book as much as you'd guess
From reading the words that come before this
So now I'd like to extoll something droll
(Oh that's another peevish thing I have to say
Of his penchant for non sequiturs en français)
Or rather good or rather nice or rather fair
(Too fair for a man who so loves the word debonair)
And that's that I liked some lines more than others
(Though they were rarer cases than their lesser brothers)
And my favoritist one did occur
On page thirty-six, eight lines in (as it were)
She buttons up a me of soft warm blur
If only more of his work had been like the above
Then, more than just half-like this book, I would love
Than I did but it lacked a rapport
With me though I'll forgive it that and I'm forgiving
It, (for the hours it took hardly need reliving)
Recommended as it was by a pal and poet
Who loves the book and staked our friendship on it
Or did he? I forget but it isn't important
What's important here is that I only half-liked it
You see, I don't mean to be prudish or rudish or a boor
But I would've liked to've liked this book a bit more
Than I did and I'll tell you why, not that you care
And I'll example it as well because, well, I'm debonair
Silly rhyme? Well, yeah, but Seidel uses it twice
By my count but my count could be off so thrice
Might be better to advance the cause of my
Discomfortable reactions towards the words he
Rhymes and sometimes doesn't rhyme or occasionally
Rhymes within the lines or even more occasionally
Makes his rhymes rhyme identically
But I'm nitpicking here though I didn't hate it
And I'd hate it to sound like I'm here to berate it
Its rhymes and its rhythms and its schemes
And its lines torn from headlines
On Bush and Iraq and other such themes
Like the bombings in London and also Madrid
And what our government's done and the evil it's did
(I'm so glad it was published before hurricane Katrina
So as to spare us a poem within that sad arena)
But he did, for some reason that I can't even fathom
Rhyme China with vagina like I did when I was seven
I'm picking nits again because it's easy for me
To not understand the brilliance I see
On the page and I'm humbled by the blurbs I read
On its back cover written, I imagine, by men
Who have jobs and taste and acumen
Who said things on this book which sound a bit out of bounds
For a poet who exclaims in at least one poem, Zounds!
Am I picky? I am. No really, really I am
And I have no talent but honest I am
Not hating this book as much as you'd guess
From reading the words that come before this
So now I'd like to extoll something droll
(Oh that's another peevish thing I have to say
Of his penchant for non sequiturs en français)
Or rather good or rather nice or rather fair
(Too fair for a man who so loves the word debonair)
And that's that I liked some lines more than others
(Though they were rarer cases than their lesser brothers)
And my favoritist one did occur
On page thirty-six, eight lines in (as it were)
She buttons up a me of soft warm blur
If only more of his work had been like the above
Then, more than just half-like this book, I would love
June 23, 2016
A dual-review of 'Evening Man' and 'Ooga-Booga.'
Yet more evidence that honest reportage from the disaffected has more critical force than puritanical censorship: it's impossible to read this and feel anything but disgust for Seidel, his world (i.e., the ultra-rich), and the world surrounding that world, in which everything is for sale, for the purposes of sex and hedonism. He's a bit like Houllebecq, if Houllebecq was much smarter and a better writer, and was a poet, rather than a novelist with poetry on the side.
And formally, he's a breath of fresh air: none of your precise, non-rhythmic patter; no hesitation in throwing in cliched rhymes if they'll get the job done; willing to find the tunes in words from anywhere (bad pop song rhythm; good hip-hop rhythm; Eliotesque slides and so on). Where most poets seem to think sentences are either logocentric impositions on their own free spirit, or that syntax is for other people, Seidel makes do with almost Hemingway-levels of minimalism, as in this final stanza of 'Ode to Spring':
"I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface."
The poems in this book mostly avoid neat closure, as here, where a trimeter would have made more conventional sense; I found this frustrating, but of course, that's the point.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading 'Evening Man' and 'Ooga-Booga' back to back; the unvarying themes (which Seidel himself pokes fun at) aren't entirely saved by the varying forms, and by the end I was ready for something else.
Yet more evidence that honest reportage from the disaffected has more critical force than puritanical censorship: it's impossible to read this and feel anything but disgust for Seidel, his world (i.e., the ultra-rich), and the world surrounding that world, in which everything is for sale, for the purposes of sex and hedonism. He's a bit like Houllebecq, if Houllebecq was much smarter and a better writer, and was a poet, rather than a novelist with poetry on the side.
And formally, he's a breath of fresh air: none of your precise, non-rhythmic patter; no hesitation in throwing in cliched rhymes if they'll get the job done; willing to find the tunes in words from anywhere (bad pop song rhythm; good hip-hop rhythm; Eliotesque slides and so on). Where most poets seem to think sentences are either logocentric impositions on their own free spirit, or that syntax is for other people, Seidel makes do with almost Hemingway-levels of minimalism, as in this final stanza of 'Ode to Spring':
"I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface."
The poems in this book mostly avoid neat closure, as here, where a trimeter would have made more conventional sense; I found this frustrating, but of course, that's the point.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading 'Evening Man' and 'Ooga-Booga' back to back; the unvarying themes (which Seidel himself pokes fun at) aren't entirely saved by the varying forms, and by the end I was ready for something else.
June 21, 2009
I'm glad I discovered Seidel; more than any other poet I've read, he closely resembles the ideal Poet of Wit that I was once unjustly disappointed in James Fenton for not embodying. The delicate balance of parlour manners and political relevance to which Seidel aspires is a near-impossible feat to pull off. Savagely witty, Seidel's poetry has all the sharpness, brightness, and injuriousness of a needle; however, I suspect it has a needle's limitations, too: while reading this book, I often wondered whether an emotional battering-ram approach might not be more effective at penetrating the huge existential clouds that Seidel endeavors to penetrate. I suspect that Seidel's studied dandyism, his pointillistic wit, and his weary-Anglo posturing can only take you so far and no farther. Notwithstanding, this book is highly entertaining -- much more so, indeed, than most books of contemporary poetry. Seidel's in-your-face political incorrectness (especially when dealing with race issues) can seem a bit gratuitous at times, though.
August 1, 2024
idk what to say. some of it is very good, other parts are very weird. But all of it is fitting for a title as strange as “Ooga-Booga”.
January 3, 2008
Seidel is a total flaneur, but the way he writes about getting a custom Ducatti motorcycle makes you realize how full-throated life can be.
Everyone I know should read Seidel. You can even hear him read his own work at his website.
Everyone I know should read Seidel. You can even hear him read his own work at his website.
October 6, 2019
this ain’t it chief
October 8, 2021
I had to google who this man is, because I am stunned at how unaccomplished and lifeless most of these poems are, with a juvenile use of rhyme and line and most poetic devices that I cannot believe this is a tenth collection, under Faber no less. I hope his other collections do his renown justice because this one is far from the mark, though there are rare moments of originality buried in here
EDIT: after ruminating on some of the later poems, where the tone changes from incompetent to unforgivable, I am changing this to one star
EDIT: after ruminating on some of the later poems, where the tone changes from incompetent to unforgivable, I am changing this to one star
November 23, 2007
What is to be done with a poet that writes: "My own poetry I find incomprehensible. / Actually, I have no one. / Everything in art is couplets. / Mine don't rhyme."? I was initially incredulous, especially when I'd happen upon the occasional stanza with an AAAA rhyme scheme. But beneath the perceived simplicity is a hilariousness, an absurdness, and a frequent and brilliant beauty that kept me smiling as I read this on the NE Corridor Line.
I find that its advisable to sit back and enjoy the ride with this foppish septuagenarian who has Ducati build him custom motorcycles so that he can fulfill his destiny of dying on a bike, in a fancy leather suit and in a fit of speed. I'd also recommend taking *Ooga-Booga* to a bar, where you can sidle-up next to your fellow regulars, tip back a pint of ale, and read aloud lines such as: "I will cut your heart out / and drink the rubies and eat the coral. / I like the female for its coral. / I go to Carnegie Hall / To make her open her mouth onstage and scream."
I find that its advisable to sit back and enjoy the ride with this foppish septuagenarian who has Ducati build him custom motorcycles so that he can fulfill his destiny of dying on a bike, in a fancy leather suit and in a fit of speed. I'd also recommend taking *Ooga-Booga* to a bar, where you can sidle-up next to your fellow regulars, tip back a pint of ale, and read aloud lines such as: "I will cut your heart out / and drink the rubies and eat the coral. / I like the female for its coral. / I go to Carnegie Hall / To make her open her mouth onstage and scream."
November 14, 2007
I experienced a number of really unpleasant feelings while reading this book. The worst part is that if I hadn't read Ooga-Booga, I think I could have enjoyed another fifty years free from these particular worries.
February 14, 2008
best american poet alive?
March 7, 2019
Like a more twisted Simic. I now want to crash an expensive motorcycle, visit Europe, and set myself on fire.
April 24, 2020
I parade in the air
And wait for the New Year
That then will, then will disappear.
I am trying not to care.
I am not able not to.
Kill Poem
I cannot remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading a book of poetry. It’s Seidel’s sarcasm and wit, his artistry in deflating pomposity and arrogance by adopting pomposity and arrogance. The problem with Ooga-Booga is Seidel is unable to maintain the tenuous balance between humor and tragedy over the course of the collection.
Seidel’s debonair narrator is focused on skewering the world around him, and the world around 2006 was in dire need of explaining and skewering. Seidel stands up, has someone hold his Haut-Brion, and quietly articulates the hypocrisy of those entrenched in power and the world: He’s buying fancy clothes, fancy Italian motorcycles, but don’t be fooled. The narrator winding through these verses is slick and difficult to pin down:
Here I am, looking around the room
At everyone getting old except the young,
Discovering that I am lacking in vanity,
Not that I care, being debonair,
Delighted by an impairment of feeling
That keeps everything away.
The Death of the Shah
If we return to the opening poem of the collection, which I quoted from at the start of this commentary, the narrator states he can’t help but care even when he desires the ability to not care.
The challenge with Ooga-Booga is that the narrator does not provide emotional touchstones to guide us through his commentary and imagery. At multiple moments, I asked myself: “Is this guy serious? Despite the offense which rears its head every few poems, I don’t believe the poet wallows in filth just to disgust the reader. Perhaps, the only response to tragedy is sarcasm, humor, and a thick hide. Seidel is an amazing poet, exasperating at times, but well worth the time.
And wait for the New Year
That then will, then will disappear.
I am trying not to care.
I am not able not to.
Kill Poem
I cannot remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading a book of poetry. It’s Seidel’s sarcasm and wit, his artistry in deflating pomposity and arrogance by adopting pomposity and arrogance. The problem with Ooga-Booga is Seidel is unable to maintain the tenuous balance between humor and tragedy over the course of the collection.
Seidel’s debonair narrator is focused on skewering the world around him, and the world around 2006 was in dire need of explaining and skewering. Seidel stands up, has someone hold his Haut-Brion, and quietly articulates the hypocrisy of those entrenched in power and the world: He’s buying fancy clothes, fancy Italian motorcycles, but don’t be fooled. The narrator winding through these verses is slick and difficult to pin down:
Here I am, looking around the room
At everyone getting old except the young,
Discovering that I am lacking in vanity,
Not that I care, being debonair,
Delighted by an impairment of feeling
That keeps everything away.
The Death of the Shah
If we return to the opening poem of the collection, which I quoted from at the start of this commentary, the narrator states he can’t help but care even when he desires the ability to not care.
The challenge with Ooga-Booga is that the narrator does not provide emotional touchstones to guide us through his commentary and imagery. At multiple moments, I asked myself: “Is this guy serious? Despite the offense which rears its head every few poems, I don’t believe the poet wallows in filth just to disgust the reader. Perhaps, the only response to tragedy is sarcasm, humor, and a thick hide. Seidel is an amazing poet, exasperating at times, but well worth the time.
December 8, 2017
It wasn't that bad, but I didn't know much about Seidel and his voice is hard to place.
I was mainly attracted to the silliness of Ooga-Booga (and the minimalist cover), which silliness I though I would be amused. And it's true there were several poems that amused me, and a few that I liked for their seriousness and poetry. But overall this satirist's take was not my cup of tea. And I call Seidel a satirist because that is the one name under which I can cohere all the elements he uses. He is at time funny to the point of overextended raunchiness, at others darkly quiet and serious with no answers, but almost always some sort of vague, short, staccato, sprightly, perhaps with a limping rhythm.
I think there was something to about this being such a late collection--2006. It seemed like poetry out of its time, a delayed cunning with late innovation. The cover quotes compare him to a mix of John Ashbery and Philip Larkin. But really that is to say by doing both, he excels at neither. The other quotes compare him in confessional mastery to Lowell and Berryman and in American loneliness to Chandler. I wasn't impressed with his confessions but I did like his American loneliness. I liked individual poems, but taken altogether it was too incongruous for me. And I was left feeling like I wasn't sure there was a point, but I enjoyed some of the poems.
A fast read on an airplane, at any rate.
I was mainly attracted to the silliness of Ooga-Booga (and the minimalist cover), which silliness I though I would be amused. And it's true there were several poems that amused me, and a few that I liked for their seriousness and poetry. But overall this satirist's take was not my cup of tea. And I call Seidel a satirist because that is the one name under which I can cohere all the elements he uses. He is at time funny to the point of overextended raunchiness, at others darkly quiet and serious with no answers, but almost always some sort of vague, short, staccato, sprightly, perhaps with a limping rhythm.
I think there was something to about this being such a late collection--2006. It seemed like poetry out of its time, a delayed cunning with late innovation. The cover quotes compare him to a mix of John Ashbery and Philip Larkin. But really that is to say by doing both, he excels at neither. The other quotes compare him in confessional mastery to Lowell and Berryman and in American loneliness to Chandler. I wasn't impressed with his confessions but I did like his American loneliness. I liked individual poems, but taken altogether it was too incongruous for me. And I was left feeling like I wasn't sure there was a point, but I enjoyed some of the poems.
A fast read on an airplane, at any rate.
July 12, 2019
Seidel is a creepy old rich guy who knows he is a creepy old rich guy and is expansively witty, clever and emotional as he navigates the world through the understanding that not everyone else is a creepy old rich guy, preemptively disarming people who have feelings and opinions about creepy old rich guys like himself with a love of language, a thrill for sensation, a naked vulnerability and a deeply sympathetic interest in the wider political world that creepy old rich guys have dominated for millennia. So yes, it's jarring. He's wickedly funny on the one hand, filled with clever rhymes (he loves rhymes!) and matter-of-fact references to the privileges that have come with his inherited wealth, but suffused in a very specific form of American body horror on the other, illustrating both the process of his own aging and the decay of the culture and society we live in. This is fascinating stuff to grapple with, in other words, and I'm glad I did.
Read
February 6, 2025"Her breast is bigger than I am.
Her nipple is bigger than my mouth.
Let me masturbate to death.
Let my hand fall off."
todo o interesse dum poeta reside na sua personalidade, se consigo encontrar aquilo noutro local, ou me parece remastigado. com o Seidel isso nunca acontece. um mestre do humor, do extravagante, com um domínio total de si mesmo. as peças equilibram-se entre o ridículo e o sensível, apesar de ter escolhido propositadamente uma parte mais cómica para o representar. mas só se ri quem quer.
o grande trunfo do Seidel é a sua capacidade de confessar o inconfessável, de dizer o que toda a gente teria medo de admitir, sobre si mesmo. porque no fundo ele É um poeta confessional...que nos confessa o seu amor por motas da ducatti rápidas, mulheres lindas e fatos feitos à medida.
Her nipple is bigger than my mouth.
Let me masturbate to death.
Let my hand fall off."
todo o interesse dum poeta reside na sua personalidade, se consigo encontrar aquilo noutro local, ou me parece remastigado. com o Seidel isso nunca acontece. um mestre do humor, do extravagante, com um domínio total de si mesmo. as peças equilibram-se entre o ridículo e o sensível, apesar de ter escolhido propositadamente uma parte mais cómica para o representar. mas só se ri quem quer.
o grande trunfo do Seidel é a sua capacidade de confessar o inconfessável, de dizer o que toda a gente teria medo de admitir, sobre si mesmo. porque no fundo ele É um poeta confessional...que nos confessa o seu amor por motas da ducatti rápidas, mulheres lindas e fatos feitos à medida.
July 14, 2020
Geweldige bundel. Brutaal, grappig, teder en melancholisch tegelijk. Seidel fileert genadeloos het Amerika van 2005, houdt een steekspel met God en met zichzelf.
Een bundel die rijmt op de meest bad ass manier die je je kan inbeelden. Seidel wordt niet zomaar Kanye Baudelaire genoemd.
Ik ontdekte vorige week toevallig dat Nick Cave een fan is van deze bundel en je kan inderdaad zien waar hij de mosterd gehaald heeft voor sommige teksten op Push The Sky Away. Een trip, een feest, lees dit beest.
Een bundel die rijmt op de meest bad ass manier die je je kan inbeelden. Seidel wordt niet zomaar Kanye Baudelaire genoemd.
Ik ontdekte vorige week toevallig dat Nick Cave een fan is van deze bundel en je kan inderdaad zien waar hij de mosterd gehaald heeft voor sommige teksten op Push The Sky Away. Een trip, een feest, lees dit beest.
March 4, 2021
It's been a while since I've read poetry, and I heard of Seidel on some weird article I was reading about forgotten authors like Joseph McElroy and Nicholas Baker. I like the idea of evil poetry, reminds me of Bolaño.
And Seidel does have a lot of echoes of Baudelaire. I guess I don't see the complete hype, but there is something hypnotic in his repetition - his race cars, dirty Parisian streets, tropical climates and colonial violence. Maybe I just gotta read more.
And Seidel does have a lot of echoes of Baudelaire. I guess I don't see the complete hype, but there is something hypnotic in his repetition - his race cars, dirty Parisian streets, tropical climates and colonial violence. Maybe I just gotta read more.
February 7, 2019
Not my cup of tea. This was my first time reading Seidel, and while a few poems stuck out to me, most are forgettable. it took about half the book to get used to his style, but even then I knew it wasn't something I personally could admire.
His poetry reads like off handed thoughts...an anti-poet almost. With hardly any injamments (if any at all, I can't recall) his lines were stilted.
His poetry reads like off handed thoughts...an anti-poet almost. With hardly any injamments (if any at all, I can't recall) his lines were stilted.
October 7, 2019
violent, disturbing, upsetting, but it had some images that really grabbed me. 2.5 stars maybe? i might change my rating
fave poem: probably "kill poem"
fave line: "The melanoma on my skin / Resumes what's wrong with me within. / My outside is my active twin. / Disease I'm repetitious in" (from "love song")
fave poem: probably "kill poem"
fave line: "The melanoma on my skin / Resumes what's wrong with me within. / My outside is my active twin. / Disease I'm repetitious in" (from "love song")
August 29, 2025
Really original stuff. Occasionally brilliant. But overall it seems that Seidel has to be engaged in some sort of unelaborate ironic joke at the expense of the reader, maybe even the expense of poetry itself, for him to write a single line of verse. Which gets a bit tiring. But some of this was high end Poésie
February 6, 2023
a very interest poetry book
Amazing. Very interesting, with many different tools and techniques and topics used. Fascinating to read - I drunk it in in one sitting, and will be reading many times over. Not always pleasant reading, but always fascinating!
Amazing. Very interesting, with many different tools and techniques and topics used. Fascinating to read - I drunk it in in one sitting, and will be reading many times over. Not always pleasant reading, but always fascinating!
March 26, 2024
Interesting use of rhyme in an era where free verse is the norm. The poet is well to do and clearly enjoys it. He writes about his bespoke high performance motorcycle being constructed, and refers to it as his "death". This makes his work unlike many poets who don't live upper crust lives.
December 27, 2017
I read it. It didn't take me long. But I didn't get it. Extra star for some fun word usage. Back to novels for me.
October 25, 2019
An old man’s well-written masturbatory ruminations on opulence.
November 25, 2020
Rhyming can still be rebellious. Seidel has something to tell y’us.
October 27, 2022
I love this book so much, words are truly inspiring I tinkled in my pants a bit from reading this. Absolutely adored this masterpiece.
August 30, 2023
I don't know if poetry is good or not, but I liked some of these very much. Some a little less.
Read
July 20, 2024Not for me
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