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Modern Poetry: Poems
Diane Seuss’s signature voice―audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude―has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry , from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft―ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda―and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.
In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time’s deep isolation and divisiveness and What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean ? “It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem,” Seuss writes. “You can’t hide / from what you made / inside what you made.” What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.
In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time’s deep isolation and divisiveness and What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean ? “It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem,” Seuss writes. “You can’t hide / from what you made / inside what you made.” What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.
128 pages, Paperback
Published November 19, 2024
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5128 people want to read
About the author
Diane Seuss
25 books232 followersDiane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. She earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988.
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November 25, 2024
Poetry has long been a favorite art form of mine. As Dylan Thomas once said, ‘ good poem is a contribution to reality’ and in harnessing language to its most malleable possibilities, poetry can unlock reality to better understand it in the abstract. A perfect phrase can send your heart soaring or bring comfort to a heart ill at ease and I’m often reminded of the words uttered by a character in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 that ‘only poetry isn’t shit.’ Yet, when looking at all the horrors and hurts in the world, what can poetry—'poetry, that snarling, flaming bitch'—actually accomplish amidst it all? This question is at the heart of Diane Seuss’s Modern Poetry, a finalist for the National Book Award and a searing look at the long lineage of poets and poetic forms succinctly captured in her own glorious prose as she begins to deconstruct the hallowed history. Bearing a photo of her teenage self on the cover, a reminder that this collection is a journey from the idealized notions of art in youth to the hard interrogations of it later in life, the format of the book is like ‘parody of a textbook,’ Seuss explained in an interview, one that chronicles her long, conflicted love of the art form and profession and how ‘my unscholarliness, / my rawness, all rise out of the cobbled / landscape I was born to.’ The poems move through references to form and their musicality often comes alive in the many references to music itself as the collaboration of pieces begin to ring out in the heart and mind of a reader more like an orchestration than mere words on a page. The effect is staggeringly beautiful. Diane Seuss’ Modern Poetry makes us think deep about the possibilities of art and our relationships to it for what is easily one of the best books of poetry I have read all year.
Coda
The best poem is no poem.
In a swath of poems, or a swathe of poems,
the best poem is without genealogy or fragrance.
It’s like an animal born without a voice box.
Or its inconvenient voice box has been removed.
The best body, nobody says to no one, is no body.
The best body, no body at all.
The sound a bodiless body makes
is akin to the sound a bird makes when it dips
its beak into a cup of jam.
Sometimes a bone makes a sound when it breaks.
It sounds just as you’d imagine it would sound.
Other times the bone is as quiet
as a really good burglar breaking and entering.
There used to be a prairie that extended way past
the ending of every story. An expanse of sedges and grasses
and wind, which made a sound like a sprinkler when the water
has been turned off for the non-payment of the bill.
The what? The bill. The unpaid water bill. Out of the spigot
streams a thirsty non-compliance. An anti-song.
Diane Seuss is a marvel of a poet. A bit of a homestate hero, being from Michigan, she was also the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her extraordinary collection frank: sonnets. There is a clear love for the art of poetry here—’I have camped / at this outpost my whole life’ she writes in the title poem—and she chronicles a lifetime of reading poets like Keats, Dickinson, Roethke, Adrienne Rich and more in academic settings (of Sylvia Plath she writes ‘I wanted to love Sylvia, but to love her would mean / loving someone who would have hated me’). Yet, as she learns, she also begins to deconstruct:
‘I was beginning
to understand, but barely. To ask a pertinent question
now and then, like where the hell was Langston Hughes
in Modern Poetry? Dickinson, in Nineteenth Century
American Lit?’
There is a brilliant examination to her proximity with poetry, but also with her own life as she understands it through her poetic investigations of it. We learn just as much about Diane Seuss the poet as we do about poetry and it is an utter delight. 'To return to the world, I must learn to love the world again,' she writes, 'my problem is with the word again. I don’t like repeat performances. I come from a long line of hungry people who hate leftovers.' There is such a cleverness to this collection full of wordplay and witty allusions and the whole thing is a riot of joy.
Across the collection is a wealth of poetic terms, from poems that say ‘see what a comma can do?’ or bear titles like Villanelle, Allegory (a gorgeous poem you can read HERE), but also musical terms and styles from Monody to Folk Song, Cowpunk and even Ballad That Ends with Bitch. ‘Performed, lyric-driven music is so close to poetry for me,’ Seuss said in an interview with Poet House and through these poems the line between poetry and music often blurs to extract how the amalgamation of details creates an emotional state in the reader or listener. ‘All details, when seen as such,’, she says of music and moments in life, ‘are potential images, but even if unmetabolized into poems, they are precious.’
I often think of a friend in college who once stated that anything done with emotional intention behind it counts as art. He gestured to the stoop a group of us were sitting on which was covered in cigarette butts, empty cans, a guitar leaned against a step, some food wrappers and, of course, us, and stated this scene was art because of the emotion of friendship and frivolity we put into it. I’ve always found that beautiful and Seuss captures that sentiment quite well. Though, as we often see on twitter poetry discourses, many people often question if something actually does count as art or poetry, finding distaste in the form or presentation of prose as reason to discredit it (I’ve seen it happen to Seuss herself and recall the very kind and humble response she gave to the random twitter critic). These issues begin to find their way into the legacy of poetry in Modern Poetry as well, such as this passage from the poem aptly titled Poetry:
So, what
can poetry be now? Dangerous
to approach such a question,
and difficult to find the will to care.
But we must not languish, soldiers,
we must go so far as to invent
new mechanisms of caring.
Maybe truth, yes, delivered
with clarity. The tone is up
to you.
When we are creating, what do we owe to language? Do we owe anything at all? Why do people often criticize the most experimental attempts and can language be made too malleable? In an interview with Hopkins Review, Seuss examines her relationship to language as an effort to guide it towards a sort of truth.
This feels akin to the words of poet June Jordan who said that ‘poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth,’ and this is often why poetry is often used as a form of protest. But is art a useful form of protest against the ills of the world (this question is at the heart of Isabella Hammad’s incredible novel Enter Ghost) and can poetry do much for us? The poem Against Poetry begins:
A poem, unlike
A living being, cannot
Perceive you, and in
Perceiving you, grant you
reality…
A career, maybe, but it is rarely attained and even the best poets have day jobs. And, as she writes in Romantic Poet:
He’d seen that the words
formed from ink melted in the rain.
Words, he now knew—and he’s once been
such a devotee—didn’t matter,
or didn’t matter so much as he’d believed
I’m reminded of the poem What Can a Poem Do? from Darius V. Daughtry (read it HERE) that states ‘a poem cannot save a life…a poem cannot stop a bullet / stop a bomb / stop terror on your doorstep.’ I also recall a tweet that went viral after Roe v Wade was overturned that read ‘I don’t want to see a poem unless it’s wrapped around a brick.’ What can a poem do? Even Seuss begins to write against the art, such as
‘The best poem is no poem.
In a swath of poems, or a swathe of poems,
the best poem is without genealogy or fragrance.’
But, perhaps, even in uselessness, poetry can still have a usefulness. As poet Toi Derricotte writes, ‘joy is an act of resistance,’ and in art we find joy and comfort. ‘Sometimes a poem is the stone you carry in your pocket—the one you rub when you’re worried,’ poet Maggie Smith wrote. And, as Darius V. Daughtry’s aforementioned poem states later on ‘a poem can introduce you to yourself / help you discover those hidden / forbidden parts,’ a poem can ‘be the axe for the frozen sea within us,’ that Franz Kafka talked about. ‘Maybe to live within / a poem is to entrap oneself / in an architecture constructed upon / outmoded theories of composition,’ Seuss writes, but poetry is also a ‘lesson in the fact that flawed people / deserve to be loved’ as she writes in Love Letter. She concludes the poem Poetry as such:
Maybe there is such a thing
as the beauty of drawing near.
Near, nearer, all the way
to the bedside of the dying
world. To sit in witness
without platitudes, no matter
the distortions of the death throes,
no matter the awful music
of the rattle. Close closer,
to that sheeted edge.
From this vantage point,
poetry can still be beautiful.
It can even be valuable, though
never wise.
This beauty might just be enough. And in that statement, there is a profound beauty. In Romantic Poet a litany of reasons to dislike a poet is given and ends with ‘but the nightingale, I said.’ It is a plea that small beauties can outweigh the large griefs, pains, horrors and other ills of the world. As poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote 'What's to fear? / Everything. / But a word / is brave,' and poetry can uplift as well as help us fortify or find courage because 'poetry is braver than anyone' wrote Roberto Bolaño. And we can find a moment of solace in the small beauties, in the perfect phrases, in the shared love of art with one another. And hopefully that can be enough.
‘Maybe the body is the soul’s
Metaphor. Maybe to escape it
Is to escape the service
Economy. To dissolve analogy.
Attain uselessness.’
Diane Seuss’ Modern Poetry is a marvel of a work that is also musically marvelous in its prose. A brilliant overview of the art of poetry and those who work within it, and an earnest and honest investigation into the usefulness of poetry, Seuss has crafted a work that proves poetry has a place in the world and, as when Emily Dickinson wrote ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking / I shall not live in vain’, if it can move our hearts it has meaning enough.
5/5
Curl
No longer at home in the world
and I imagine
never again at home in the world.
Not in cemeteries or bogs
churning with bullfrogs.
Or outside the old pickle shop.
I once made myself
at home on that street,
and the street after that,
and the boulevard. The avenue.
I don’t need to explain it to you.
It seems wrong
to curl now within the confines
of a poem. You can’t hide
from what you made
inside what you made
or so I’m told.
Coda
The best poem is no poem.
In a swath of poems, or a swathe of poems,
the best poem is without genealogy or fragrance.
It’s like an animal born without a voice box.
Or its inconvenient voice box has been removed.
The best body, nobody says to no one, is no body.
The best body, no body at all.
The sound a bodiless body makes
is akin to the sound a bird makes when it dips
its beak into a cup of jam.
Sometimes a bone makes a sound when it breaks.
It sounds just as you’d imagine it would sound.
Other times the bone is as quiet
as a really good burglar breaking and entering.
There used to be a prairie that extended way past
the ending of every story. An expanse of sedges and grasses
and wind, which made a sound like a sprinkler when the water
has been turned off for the non-payment of the bill.
The what? The bill. The unpaid water bill. Out of the spigot
streams a thirsty non-compliance. An anti-song.
Diane Seuss is a marvel of a poet. A bit of a homestate hero, being from Michigan, she was also the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her extraordinary collection frank: sonnets. There is a clear love for the art of poetry here—’I have camped / at this outpost my whole life’ she writes in the title poem—and she chronicles a lifetime of reading poets like Keats, Dickinson, Roethke, Adrienne Rich and more in academic settings (of Sylvia Plath she writes ‘I wanted to love Sylvia, but to love her would mean / loving someone who would have hated me’). Yet, as she learns, she also begins to deconstruct:
‘I was beginning
to understand, but barely. To ask a pertinent question
now and then, like where the hell was Langston Hughes
in Modern Poetry? Dickinson, in Nineteenth Century
American Lit?’
There is a brilliant examination to her proximity with poetry, but also with her own life as she understands it through her poetic investigations of it. We learn just as much about Diane Seuss the poet as we do about poetry and it is an utter delight. 'To return to the world, I must learn to love the world again,' she writes, 'my problem is with the word again. I don’t like repeat performances. I come from a long line of hungry people who hate leftovers.' There is such a cleverness to this collection full of wordplay and witty allusions and the whole thing is a riot of joy.
Across the collection is a wealth of poetic terms, from poems that say ‘see what a comma can do?’ or bear titles like Villanelle, Allegory (a gorgeous poem you can read HERE), but also musical terms and styles from Monody to Folk Song, Cowpunk and even Ballad That Ends with Bitch. ‘Performed, lyric-driven music is so close to poetry for me,’ Seuss said in an interview with Poet House and through these poems the line between poetry and music often blurs to extract how the amalgamation of details creates an emotional state in the reader or listener. ‘All details, when seen as such,’, she says of music and moments in life, ‘are potential images, but even if unmetabolized into poems, they are precious.’
I often think of a friend in college who once stated that anything done with emotional intention behind it counts as art. He gestured to the stoop a group of us were sitting on which was covered in cigarette butts, empty cans, a guitar leaned against a step, some food wrappers and, of course, us, and stated this scene was art because of the emotion of friendship and frivolity we put into it. I’ve always found that beautiful and Seuss captures that sentiment quite well. Though, as we often see on twitter poetry discourses, many people often question if something actually does count as art or poetry, finding distaste in the form or presentation of prose as reason to discredit it (I’ve seen it happen to Seuss herself and recall the very kind and humble response she gave to the random twitter critic). These issues begin to find their way into the legacy of poetry in Modern Poetry as well, such as this passage from the poem aptly titled Poetry:
So, what
can poetry be now? Dangerous
to approach such a question,
and difficult to find the will to care.
But we must not languish, soldiers,
we must go so far as to invent
new mechanisms of caring.
Maybe truth, yes, delivered
with clarity. The tone is up
to you.
When we are creating, what do we owe to language? Do we owe anything at all? Why do people often criticize the most experimental attempts and can language be made too malleable? In an interview with Hopkins Review, Seuss examines her relationship to language as an effort to guide it towards a sort of truth.
‘my responsibility is to the language so that the language can be raised like a veil to expose that “something else,” the inexplicable that lives behind the artifice. It is like housekeeping, in that the true labor results in the labor disappearing, revealing only the house in a state of illusory order. The truth of a poem is arrived at via its language, as the truth of the soul is arrived at via the body.’
This feels akin to the words of poet June Jordan who said that ‘poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth,’ and this is often why poetry is often used as a form of protest. But is art a useful form of protest against the ills of the world (this question is at the heart of Isabella Hammad’s incredible novel Enter Ghost) and can poetry do much for us? The poem Against Poetry begins:
A poem, unlike
A living being, cannot
Perceive you, and in
Perceiving you, grant you
reality…
A career, maybe, but it is rarely attained and even the best poets have day jobs. And, as she writes in Romantic Poet:
He’d seen that the words
formed from ink melted in the rain.
Words, he now knew—and he’s once been
such a devotee—didn’t matter,
or didn’t matter so much as he’d believed
I’m reminded of the poem What Can a Poem Do? from Darius V. Daughtry (read it HERE) that states ‘a poem cannot save a life…a poem cannot stop a bullet / stop a bomb / stop terror on your doorstep.’ I also recall a tweet that went viral after Roe v Wade was overturned that read ‘I don’t want to see a poem unless it’s wrapped around a brick.’ What can a poem do? Even Seuss begins to write against the art, such as
‘The best poem is no poem.
In a swath of poems, or a swathe of poems,
the best poem is without genealogy or fragrance.’
But, perhaps, even in uselessness, poetry can still have a usefulness. As poet Toi Derricotte writes, ‘joy is an act of resistance,’ and in art we find joy and comfort. ‘Sometimes a poem is the stone you carry in your pocket—the one you rub when you’re worried,’ poet Maggie Smith wrote. And, as Darius V. Daughtry’s aforementioned poem states later on ‘a poem can introduce you to yourself / help you discover those hidden / forbidden parts,’ a poem can ‘be the axe for the frozen sea within us,’ that Franz Kafka talked about. ‘Maybe to live within / a poem is to entrap oneself / in an architecture constructed upon / outmoded theories of composition,’ Seuss writes, but poetry is also a ‘lesson in the fact that flawed people / deserve to be loved’ as she writes in Love Letter. She concludes the poem Poetry as such:
Maybe there is such a thing
as the beauty of drawing near.
Near, nearer, all the way
to the bedside of the dying
world. To sit in witness
without platitudes, no matter
the distortions of the death throes,
no matter the awful music
of the rattle. Close closer,
to that sheeted edge.
From this vantage point,
poetry can still be beautiful.
It can even be valuable, though
never wise.
This beauty might just be enough. And in that statement, there is a profound beauty. In Romantic Poet a litany of reasons to dislike a poet is given and ends with ‘but the nightingale, I said.’ It is a plea that small beauties can outweigh the large griefs, pains, horrors and other ills of the world. As poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote 'What's to fear? / Everything. / But a word / is brave,' and poetry can uplift as well as help us fortify or find courage because 'poetry is braver than anyone' wrote Roberto Bolaño. And we can find a moment of solace in the small beauties, in the perfect phrases, in the shared love of art with one another. And hopefully that can be enough.
‘Maybe the body is the soul’s
Metaphor. Maybe to escape it
Is to escape the service
Economy. To dissolve analogy.
Attain uselessness.’
Diane Seuss’ Modern Poetry is a marvel of a work that is also musically marvelous in its prose. A brilliant overview of the art of poetry and those who work within it, and an earnest and honest investigation into the usefulness of poetry, Seuss has crafted a work that proves poetry has a place in the world and, as when Emily Dickinson wrote ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking / I shall not live in vain’, if it can move our hearts it has meaning enough.
5/5
Curl
No longer at home in the world
and I imagine
never again at home in the world.
Not in cemeteries or bogs
churning with bullfrogs.
Or outside the old pickle shop.
I once made myself
at home on that street,
and the street after that,
and the boulevard. The avenue.
I don’t need to explain it to you.
It seems wrong
to curl now within the confines
of a poem. You can’t hide
from what you made
inside what you made
or so I’m told.
Read
June 4, 2024There's that famous scene in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye where Holden talks about authors and how certain ones create an urge to call them up because you think you know them so well from reading them and figure, within a few seconds of brief explanation, you'll be talking like a couple of old college friends who haven't seen each other in 20 years.
Well, I'm extrapolating a bit maybe. But you get the point. When you read a contemporary, conversational poet like Diane Seuss, you have a Holden Caulfield moment and figure you could talk the day away with her though, who knows, you could be as different as Texas and Vermont.
As for the poetry, Lord. Most I enjoy but some I read and say, "Really?" That is, slim pickings. But then you move on and get wowed as I was by the longish effort called "Allegory." It's kinda cool, the way some poems have poetic tie-ins for titles: "Ballad," "Monody," "Villanelle," "Ballad in Sestets," "Little Refrain," "Romantic Poetry," "Threnody," etc.
I remember reading "Romantic Poet" when it first appeared in Poetry Magazine. As it's short, it makes a good introduction if you've never read Seuss. There's more than one Keats-related poem in this collection (Keats is Seuss's darling), but this one's the punchiest by far.
Romantic Poet by Diane Seuss
You would not have loved him,
my friend the scholar
decried. He brushed his teeth,
if at all, with salt. He lied,
and rarely washed
his hair. Wiped his ass
with leaves or with his hand.
The top of his head would have barely
reached your tits. His pits
reeked, as did his deathbed.
But the nightingale, I said.
Well, I'm extrapolating a bit maybe. But you get the point. When you read a contemporary, conversational poet like Diane Seuss, you have a Holden Caulfield moment and figure you could talk the day away with her though, who knows, you could be as different as Texas and Vermont.
As for the poetry, Lord. Most I enjoy but some I read and say, "Really?" That is, slim pickings. But then you move on and get wowed as I was by the longish effort called "Allegory." It's kinda cool, the way some poems have poetic tie-ins for titles: "Ballad," "Monody," "Villanelle," "Ballad in Sestets," "Little Refrain," "Romantic Poetry," "Threnody," etc.
I remember reading "Romantic Poet" when it first appeared in Poetry Magazine. As it's short, it makes a good introduction if you've never read Seuss. There's more than one Keats-related poem in this collection (Keats is Seuss's darling), but this one's the punchiest by far.
Romantic Poet by Diane Seuss
You would not have loved him,
my friend the scholar
decried. He brushed his teeth,
if at all, with salt. He lied,
and rarely washed
his hair. Wiped his ass
with leaves or with his hand.
The top of his head would have barely
reached your tits. His pits
reeked, as did his deathbed.
But the nightingale, I said.
March 5, 2025
After reading Diane Seuss
Of writing poesy what’s the use?
Goodness knows I’ve paid my dues
At the altars of the muse
Words squeezed out of me like juice
I've produced and I produce
More rhyming lines than Pharaoh’s Jews
Did contemplate the Red Sea’s hues
Versifier on the loose
I trump my sixes with my deuce
More than once I’ve blown a fuse
I think in feet and burn my shoes
But when compared with Diane Seuss
I feel just like a common goose
(Not a bird you'll find in zoos)
Honking after Orpheus
And though my name is Odysseus
I ain’t like her auda-ci-ous
She writes poems that make the news
I write silly re-verse-views
Of her train I’m the caboose
—It’s like tryin’ to compete with Zeus!
October 5, 2024
The way Seuss uses such unique imagery is fascinating to me:
“Love, that little wood tick. That tick-in-the ass. Say the word enough times inside your head, it will fall out of its meaning like a stillborn, plop, into the toilet.”
This quote describes me perfectly:
“To return to the world, I must learn to love the world again. My problem is with the word again . I don’t like repeat performances. I come from a long line of hungry people who hate leftovers.”
“Love, that little wood tick. That tick-in-the ass. Say the word enough times inside your head, it will fall out of its meaning like a stillborn, plop, into the toilet.”
This quote describes me perfectly:
“To return to the world, I must learn to love the world again. My problem is with the word again . I don’t like repeat performances. I come from a long line of hungry people who hate leftovers.”
September 22, 2023
Diane Seuss is back and better than ever. Her trademark vulnerability and deceptive simplicity are stronger than ever in this new collection that, among other things, reckons with poetry's past and its potential future.
I will admit that I have grown skeptical of critiques of the "canon" which I often find reductive, repetitive, and devoid of real attention to the work one means to critique. However, that is not at all the case here. Seuss brings questions of class and gender to the forefront while still managing to interact with the poets of the past in a way that feels like a real dialogue. It also helps that her insights are often hilarious. Her invocation of Keats is especially moving and the last poem in the book, which takes after his Ode to the Nightingale, is a personal favorite.
I will admit that I have grown skeptical of critiques of the "canon" which I often find reductive, repetitive, and devoid of real attention to the work one means to critique. However, that is not at all the case here. Seuss brings questions of class and gender to the forefront while still managing to interact with the poets of the past in a way that feels like a real dialogue. It also helps that her insights are often hilarious. Her invocation of Keats is especially moving and the last poem in the book, which takes after his Ode to the Nightingale, is a personal favorite.
September 21, 2024
These poems had an almost musical cadence to them, showcasing the author’s mastery of her craft. This isn’t an all-time favourite for me, but I had a lovely afternoon reading it.
Read
July 28, 2025“Maybe to live within
a poem is to entrap oneself
in an architecture constructed upon
outmoded theories of composition”
The above lines are from the poem, Against Poetry and perfectly encapsulate the ethos of Modern Poetry. In this collection, Diane Suess is exploring the undefinable—what is poetry, and how does it exist in our modern world? She begins by writing about learning various women poets and form. She then explores the cyclical themes that have haunted poets since the dawn of time: love. death. marriage. beauty. morality. She pays homage to some of the greats such as Keats and Gertrude Stein, while experimenting with various poetic forms. Seuss’s signature punk style shines through, which creates a delicious tension between tradition and the unconventional.
A poem that struck me was “Weeds” and several lines will definitely jump around in my brain for the next few days.
a poem is to entrap oneself
in an architecture constructed upon
outmoded theories of composition”
The above lines are from the poem, Against Poetry and perfectly encapsulate the ethos of Modern Poetry. In this collection, Diane Suess is exploring the undefinable—what is poetry, and how does it exist in our modern world? She begins by writing about learning various women poets and form. She then explores the cyclical themes that have haunted poets since the dawn of time: love. death. marriage. beauty. morality. She pays homage to some of the greats such as Keats and Gertrude Stein, while experimenting with various poetic forms. Seuss’s signature punk style shines through, which creates a delicious tension between tradition and the unconventional.
A poem that struck me was “Weeds” and several lines will definitely jump around in my brain for the next few days.
March 9, 2024
“So what did modern poetry mean? Maybe just fucked up.”
I loved frank: sonnets for capturing a life lived in its complexity, framing difficult images and topics in a way that surprised and challenged me for the whole ride. Modern Poetry is like its photo negative - but as Seuss states she doesn’t believe in similes. It’s closer to a memoir in poems, blissfully aware of its structure and willing to make jokes using its form. It’s the most readable thing she’s ever produced, but despite that, it doesn’t sacrifice meaning or purpose.
I don’t think titles are very important for Seuss, and that she included them at all seems often more for comedic effect. Despite the pain lacing these anecdotes, it is exceedingly funny throughout. She tells us she hates the personal, but this book is loaded with personality - the same goes for her opinions on love. Although reading a book puts readers in a one-sided relationship with its author, I have this very clear image now of who Diane Seuss believes herself to be, and I really enjoyed getting to experience that shared closeness.
Aside from being a book on her own history, Modern Poetry is also an examination of poetry as an art form itself. It’s a phenomenal document for young readers looking for a north, and our relationship with the people who have come before us.
I am interested to hear what the Seuss-heads will think of this one. I’m not sure all of these poems can hold themselves up alone without the support of the others. This isn’t a collection of singles on a jukebox: this is a concept album. Enjoy the ride.
I loved frank: sonnets for capturing a life lived in its complexity, framing difficult images and topics in a way that surprised and challenged me for the whole ride. Modern Poetry is like its photo negative - but as Seuss states she doesn’t believe in similes. It’s closer to a memoir in poems, blissfully aware of its structure and willing to make jokes using its form. It’s the most readable thing she’s ever produced, but despite that, it doesn’t sacrifice meaning or purpose.
I don’t think titles are very important for Seuss, and that she included them at all seems often more for comedic effect. Despite the pain lacing these anecdotes, it is exceedingly funny throughout. She tells us she hates the personal, but this book is loaded with personality - the same goes for her opinions on love. Although reading a book puts readers in a one-sided relationship with its author, I have this very clear image now of who Diane Seuss believes herself to be, and I really enjoyed getting to experience that shared closeness.
Aside from being a book on her own history, Modern Poetry is also an examination of poetry as an art form itself. It’s a phenomenal document for young readers looking for a north, and our relationship with the people who have come before us.
I am interested to hear what the Seuss-heads will think of this one. I’m not sure all of these poems can hold themselves up alone without the support of the others. This isn’t a collection of singles on a jukebox: this is a concept album. Enjoy the ride.
October 21, 2024
At age ten, I turned away from tenderness... My house is a cold mess except for that thing in the corner. Poetry, that snarling, flaming bitch.
I am a wretched thing! Wrecked by a good line break!
I am a wretched thing! Wrecked by a good line break!
January 21, 2025
Diane Seuss did not win the 2024 National Book Award in Poetry. I'll have to make of reading the winner, because it's hard to imagine a better collection than "Modern Poetry." Though I've never read a collection by Seuss before, I have always been impressed, over the years, by her individual poems as they popped up here and there. That said, "Modern Poetry" exceeded any expectations I may have had. It's dark, cynical, it even runs the risk of being sour in the last half of the collection. But it is never self-pitying. The collection represents a looking back over the poet's life. Such "looking back" efforts are usually filled with regrets (however packaged). In Seuss' case the looking back is more a striving toward observation and evaluation (which is also, given Seuss' scrupulousness, is also distrusted). The nature of Poetry (with a noted fixation on Keats), sometimes boozy love affairs, single parenthood, death, single parent-hood, are all subjects of reflection. The poems vary in length, some are fairly long, like the outstanding "Allegory," but short or long, Seuss never falters. My first poetry read of the new year could easily be my best. Highly recommended.
September 20, 2024
what i would give to climb inside this woman’s mind.
April 19, 2025
He de llegir més Keats.
July 20, 2024
“You can’t hide
from what you made
inside what you made
or so I’m told.” — “Curl”
from what you made
inside what you made
or so I’m told.” — “Curl”
April 1, 2024
Diane Seuss makes me feel more equipped to both succumb to and rage against the numbness of life as experience piles and emotion simmers into something less than it once was. I took forever to read this because of ennui and severe anguish and haven't been able to keep myself focused on a page of text. Poetry has been the only thing really accessible to me. And starting this collection over and going through it over the past couple days has been such a joy. So much of the gesturing toward Romantic poetry through her play with the macabre and grotesque feels so true to contemporary life. So much toying with bygone modes without falling prey to pastiche or cheap mimicry. It's not better than frank: sonnets, but I really don't give a damn. It's an amazing thing to become conscious of the ecstacy of poems that click for you as they come together line by line, like being able to peer at all the micro details of a painting and then, finally, taking those steps back and witnessing the whole. Diane Seuss' vision encompasses the whole and beyond.
March 7, 2024
me reading diane seuss is eileen davidson snarling “you beast” at kim richards in amsterdam
April 29, 2025
Even though I do like some of the poems in this collection song new drag on A little long I do like Where you get glimpses into her passing the emotions there this is definitely a lot better quality in Monarch poetry that I’ve recently led compared to others I’m actually kind of interested in checking out some of the other works by this poet but not in a giant hurry I’ll say
November 26, 2025
I’m not sure why I don’t like this book. Maybe it’s because Seuss seems to be “trying” to put herself in the pantheon of great poets? Maybe I find the poems boring? Maybe I’m disappointed after “Frank”? I just don’t understand why she can’t be herself, the book is like a monument to an unnecessary insecurity. Ms. Seuss you are a great poet, you don’t have to tell us you are one.
October 29, 2024
National Book Award Finalist (2024)
Diane Seuss’ “Modern Poetry” is a collection of forty one poems where she wrestles with the legacies of Romantic and Modernist poetry. She’s not concerned with conveying “Truth” or “Beauty” in her poems but relating the mundane and grittiness of every day life. Ironically, this becomes her own version of “Truth” and “Beauty.”
She writes with self-deprecation and humor. There weren’t many whole poems that resonated with me, but there were a lot of lines that were really great:
“If you are like me, to learn of the gods you must
beg, borrow, or steal. Eavesdrop, as gossip
is sagacity, a word I learned from Emily
Dickinson. Don’t underestimate direct
experience. Ants know earth. Dragonflies
know air. A cobbled mind is not fatal.
You have to be willing to self-educate
at a moment’s notice, and to be caught
in your ignorance…”
- - -
“So, what
can poetry be now? Dangerous
to approach such a question,
and difficult to find the will to care.
But we must not languish, soldiers,
we must go so far as to invent
new mechanisms of caring.
Maybe truth, yes, delivered
with clarity. The tone is up
to you.”
- - -
“The best poem is no poem.
In a swath of poems, or a swathe of poems,
the best poem is without genealogy or fragrance.”
Diane Seuss’ “Modern Poetry” is a collection of forty one poems where she wrestles with the legacies of Romantic and Modernist poetry. She’s not concerned with conveying “Truth” or “Beauty” in her poems but relating the mundane and grittiness of every day life. Ironically, this becomes her own version of “Truth” and “Beauty.”
She writes with self-deprecation and humor. There weren’t many whole poems that resonated with me, but there were a lot of lines that were really great:
“If you are like me, to learn of the gods you must
beg, borrow, or steal. Eavesdrop, as gossip
is sagacity, a word I learned from Emily
Dickinson. Don’t underestimate direct
experience. Ants know earth. Dragonflies
know air. A cobbled mind is not fatal.
You have to be willing to self-educate
at a moment’s notice, and to be caught
in your ignorance…”
- - -
“So, what
can poetry be now? Dangerous
to approach such a question,
and difficult to find the will to care.
But we must not languish, soldiers,
we must go so far as to invent
new mechanisms of caring.
Maybe truth, yes, delivered
with clarity. The tone is up
to you.”
- - -
“The best poem is no poem.
In a swath of poems, or a swathe of poems,
the best poem is without genealogy or fragrance.”
August 18, 2025
“The microdead ride modern poems / like swan boats in the park.”
I opened this off a recommendation from a writing professor for the poet—albeit a different collection. I’m so glad I had jotted the name down in class and recognized it later to check out on Libby.
What an experience. I’ll be candid—there were some poems that did not resonate. I feel as though some of them vary enough stylistically from the majority to make it a little jarring. But the ones that soared above did so beyond any sort of expectation I went in with, and thus formulated my high rating. Astounding. The potent imagery, coupled with unfamiliar and striking descriptors, are my absolute favorite. Some poems had lines that stopped me in my tracks. Sheer impact. Plus, Seuss is Michigan raised 🤩 Midwest poetic elegance
Favorites that I highlighted beyond repair on my kindle app:
Modern Poetry
My Education
Folk Song
Ballad in Sestets
Allegory
4.25 stars rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I opened this off a recommendation from a writing professor for the poet—albeit a different collection. I’m so glad I had jotted the name down in class and recognized it later to check out on Libby.
What an experience. I’ll be candid—there were some poems that did not resonate. I feel as though some of them vary enough stylistically from the majority to make it a little jarring. But the ones that soared above did so beyond any sort of expectation I went in with, and thus formulated my high rating. Astounding. The potent imagery, coupled with unfamiliar and striking descriptors, are my absolute favorite. Some poems had lines that stopped me in my tracks. Sheer impact. Plus, Seuss is Michigan raised 🤩 Midwest poetic elegance
Favorites that I highlighted beyond repair on my kindle app:
Modern Poetry
My Education
Folk Song
Ballad in Sestets
Allegory
4.25 stars rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 11, 2024
Still, I’m copious, and so are you.
You can’t be simile. Deep down even mud is not comparable. I had a friend whose smile was a frown.
It’s possible there is an undiscovered room or house, or a structure somewhere I don’t yet have the language for. An academy of silences. A cathedral of cross-purposed voices. A posthuman spaciousness filled only with a reemerged species of butterflies. A catacomb of cluster flies. Whatever it will be, it will be new, filled with its own mystifying absurdities, and likely beyond me.
You can’t be simile. Deep down even mud is not comparable. I had a friend whose smile was a frown.
It’s possible there is an undiscovered room or house, or a structure somewhere I don’t yet have the language for. An academy of silences. A cathedral of cross-purposed voices. A posthuman spaciousness filled only with a reemerged species of butterflies. A catacomb of cluster flies. Whatever it will be, it will be new, filled with its own mystifying absurdities, and likely beyond me.
December 7, 2024
“What kind of person steals books? The kind who robs the apple tree of its apples.”
“A cobbled mind is not fatal. You have to be willing to self-educate at a moment’s notice, and to be caught in your ignorance by people who will use it against you. You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, will be your own.”
“A cobbled mind is not fatal. You have to be willing to self-educate at a moment’s notice, and to be caught in your ignorance by people who will use it against you. You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, will be your own.”
November 4, 2024
Everytime I read Diane Seuss, I want to be a poet, but the only poet I’d ever want to be is Diane Seuss.
March 7, 2025
diane seuss i fucking love you girl
August 28, 2025
4.5 stars!!! i didn't realize diane was a slut for john keats (me too, girl, me too) i especially felt the last segment of this collection will stick with me
September 16, 2024
NBA LONG LIST IKTR
August 20, 2025
“I don’t cry on the outside.
I haven’t reached that level of liberation
from the granite my angel is trapped in.
I do cry inside. Imagine taking a sunset cruise
and watching purple waves brew.
That’s what I do.”
... okay?
I haven’t reached that level of liberation
from the granite my angel is trapped in.
I do cry inside. Imagine taking a sunset cruise
and watching purple waves brew.
That’s what I do.”
... okay?
May 3, 2025
surprised at how much this did not impress me. voice was bored, cynical, or detached in most poems. have liked seuss in the past, so this is disappointing. small snippets of very good among the mediocre, though
March 14, 2024
Diane Seuss coming in hot AGAIN. Obsessed.
May 7, 2024
I mean, I’ve sat with this book for a long time not wanting to read the last few poems. I never wanted it to end. Seuss’s poetry speaks to me in ways I could never explain. So I’m not going to try.
January 14, 2025
I can appreciate this collection from a technical standpoint but not from an emotional one. I'm not a huge fan of meta poems or poems making some universal statement. I understand that the poems here are meant to be a criticism of sorts of Modern Poetry but I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was more personal. There are some poems that use personal memory or have some narrative that I prefer because I'm able to connect with the poet. Much of the poetry employs compellingly crude imagery and language. Sometimes they are disjoint in a musical way, , but most of the time they feel fragmented. There isn't much beauty in the poems, but maybe that's the point. I like this collection for the way it sings in specific sections, and how some of the crassness offers new perspectives on things like romance or family relationships. Overall, I felt unaffected by the poems, hence the three stars.
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