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Poems 1959-2009
These are the collected poems of a master whose work includes many of the most compelling, savage, and tender poems in the language. Frederick Seidel is, in the words of the critic Adam Kirsch, “the best American poet writing today.”
528 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2009
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September 5, 2025
Back to where the only place to go is far.
Ahab on the launch pad - I'm the roar
Wearing a wild blazer, black stripes and red,
And a yarmulke with a propeller on my missile head.
My friends, this is an astonishing collection. I was especially coy with the fact that it is in reverse chronology. There is a conversational tone here, think Frank O'Hara but perhaps with the Aletheia of Don DeLillo but never (okay, maybe not as prevalent?) with the crabby disdain of Alexander Theroux. There are recurring themes and poems reworked for different periods. There's an air of privilege and a certain hunger. The poet looks back to St. Louis. He glances, or is it scoffs, at the Mandelstam and Lowell on the shelf. No destiny nor confession here. The poet dreams about motorcycles and carnal absolution. It is no surprise that mirrors feature repeatedly.
Why write a poem?
There isn’t any rain in hell
So why keep opening an umbrella?
That was the song he found himself singing.
It is astonishing to consider that poet still lives and this hefty tome is a reflection of a sixty year endeavor, plotting quatrains to echo the corporeal and the fractal traces of memory. He taunts his own failure. He laughs at Norman Mailer and yes I meant that to rhyme.
Ahab on the launch pad - I'm the roar
Wearing a wild blazer, black stripes and red,
And a yarmulke with a propeller on my missile head.
My friends, this is an astonishing collection. I was especially coy with the fact that it is in reverse chronology. There is a conversational tone here, think Frank O'Hara but perhaps with the Aletheia of Don DeLillo but never (okay, maybe not as prevalent?) with the crabby disdain of Alexander Theroux. There are recurring themes and poems reworked for different periods. There's an air of privilege and a certain hunger. The poet looks back to St. Louis. He glances, or is it scoffs, at the Mandelstam and Lowell on the shelf. No destiny nor confession here. The poet dreams about motorcycles and carnal absolution. It is no surprise that mirrors feature repeatedly.
Why write a poem?
There isn’t any rain in hell
So why keep opening an umbrella?
That was the song he found himself singing.
It is astonishing to consider that poet still lives and this hefty tome is a reflection of a sixty year endeavor, plotting quatrains to echo the corporeal and the fractal traces of memory. He taunts his own failure. He laughs at Norman Mailer and yes I meant that to rhyme.
Read
December 29, 2011While it would probably make him produce “cow flops on the floor,” as Seidel writes in one of his many recent, disgust-filled poems about aging (especially as that process involves women), I find him perhaps the most adorably tonic current toilers in the art. Our reader-friendly age, as though by Pavlovian response, has come to bestow its highest praise on writers deemed “compassionate” and “empathetic,” as well as those whose risk-taking and “transgressiveness” involves a stage of promiscuous slumming or stealing Percocets from their parents’ medicine cabinets. What could be more genuinely transgressive than lines describing femmes beyond d’un certain age, when naked, as “just a total nightmare,” speaking casually of privilege that allows for a wardrobe of bespoke suits and accessories such as Ducati motorcycles? And yet Seidel’s first two books, FINAL SOLUTION and SUNRISE, reprinted here, are the ones to which I found myself returning. These collections’ poems are more expansive and tend to be longer, while some of his most recent work--though much of it remains beautifully crafted, in perfect Baudelairean counterpoint to its purposefully hideous subject matter--has seemed more like jottings or notes for finished pieces. The earlier “Scotland,” “The Blue-Eyed Doe,” and “Wanting to Live in Harlem” are masterpieces of contemporary writing, however much Seidel has derided the spell Lowell cast upon them, a spell under which he has said he still writes. But Lowell never moved as elliptically or subtly through a nation’s love of violence as Seidel does in “Scotland,” with its love of shooting parties (an ontological contradiction?) and “blood-pud,” or wrote with as much detached--oh, dear, here comes that word--compassion about either of his parents: “The Blue-Eyed Doe,” about Seidel’s emotionally disturbed mother, is heart-breaking. For the most part, however, he remains happily easy to dislike. Is Seidel the one poet of our time who has actually received death threats? In any event, the risks he takes are genuine, and he has, thus far, survived them all.
(originally published in ANTIOCH REVIEW)
(originally published in ANTIOCH REVIEW)
January 2, 2013
It's fitting that I have not words that could possibly handle just how important or good these poems are. There's no way to match this man, this master.
Here's something: I hadn't heard of him until the Charlotte Rampling documentary film released late in 2010. Because she seemed to range among many interesting artists, I thought I'd acquaint myself.
This collection arranges itself from the present backwards -- a system I'd only seen in a Richard Wilbur collection.
I was shocked. Knocked out of my socks.
Category? He doesn't seem to fit. Well, his earliest, back in the late 50s, early 60s, do have the trimness of that time, that educated, Robert Lowell style. Lots of density, noticeable internal 'work'.
But later on? I don't know. A smidgeon surreal. Always intelligent. Unlike virtually all current poets of stature, not hugging a political line. Yet not shunning what seems to be a generally liberal orientation. And not embracing a deliberately conservative formalism. Throwing lines off-balance, yet holding onto rhythm.
One encounters stanzas like this, from "A Song for Cole Porter", in Evening Man:
For everyone's a sexual object
Everyone is something to use.
Everyone is something good.
I oink when I fuck but have feelings and wings.
Pigs can fly.
And, differently, from "East Hampton Airport", in Ooga Booga:
East Hampton Airport is my shepherd.
It was smaller when I took lessons.
The shepherd's crook has high-tech runway lights now.
The shack became a terminal.
The private jets drop by to sleep.
The materialism in both those, coarse in one, blase in the other, is nevertheless admitted to be subject to a potential weightlessness or lift from gravity. And in their separate ways, funny.
And when he takes on the creation of matter, the forerunner of matter, the ethereal, abstract nature of . . . nature emerges and eventually wrestles itself into being, one moment of which from "Mirror Full of Stars", in The Cosmos Poems:
A can of shaving cream inflames
A ping pong ball of lather,
Thick, hot, smaller than an atom, soon
The size of the world . . .
and further down in the same:
Don't play with matches.
The candle flame follows her
With its eyes. The night sky is a mirror
On a wall.
Pick almost anywhere in Cosmos -- at random, from "Forever":
The innocence of the tornado
Of the universe torridly
Twists the universe, the way a clay pot turns
On a potter's wheel languidly
Gaining form, the funnel and the rapturous
Waist swaying slowly
Like a belly dancer at ten million
Miles an hour . . .
The tornado metaphor continues morphing -- "Elephant trunk", "cobra".
Dipping into earlier work, "Stars" in Going Fast:
We fall from stars
In all the color of Brazil,
Of Africa, Iran.
We stir a black hole swirl, star
Figure skaters twirling on the black, galaxies
Unspooling on the surface tension
Of the morning coffee . . .
On and on there's evidence of Seidel's fluid virtuosity.
Oh, he's got plenty of formal control. But he doesn't dine out on it. And even in his poems of recent days (he's in his 70s), there's plenty of surprise wet in the sexuality lying on his sheets next to her lipstick.
His poems praise speed, a tasteful, dangerous high-living, an appreciation for friends whose names likely appear on social register lists and in places of corporate prominence. They smack us with our wants and praise the joys we may only sometimes reach for. And may not ever get to.
The poems from the Cosmos Trilogy may ultimately -- if they're not already thought so -- be considered one of the great works of our time. Seidel's figurations help make intelligible otherwise arcane ideas founded in sophisticated mathematics and astronomy.
I'm not sure whether it's the wealth he was born to or his honesty about human desire and feeling, but he hasn't gotten the fame he deserves. Maybe it's unnecessary.
This has been a lot of words by someone claiming not to be able to handle Seidel. And I haven't.
Here's something: I hadn't heard of him until the Charlotte Rampling documentary film released late in 2010. Because she seemed to range among many interesting artists, I thought I'd acquaint myself.
This collection arranges itself from the present backwards -- a system I'd only seen in a Richard Wilbur collection.
I was shocked. Knocked out of my socks.
Category? He doesn't seem to fit. Well, his earliest, back in the late 50s, early 60s, do have the trimness of that time, that educated, Robert Lowell style. Lots of density, noticeable internal 'work'.
But later on? I don't know. A smidgeon surreal. Always intelligent. Unlike virtually all current poets of stature, not hugging a political line. Yet not shunning what seems to be a generally liberal orientation. And not embracing a deliberately conservative formalism. Throwing lines off-balance, yet holding onto rhythm.
One encounters stanzas like this, from "A Song for Cole Porter", in Evening Man:
For everyone's a sexual object
Everyone is something to use.
Everyone is something good.
I oink when I fuck but have feelings and wings.
Pigs can fly.
And, differently, from "East Hampton Airport", in Ooga Booga:
East Hampton Airport is my shepherd.
It was smaller when I took lessons.
The shepherd's crook has high-tech runway lights now.
The shack became a terminal.
The private jets drop by to sleep.
The materialism in both those, coarse in one, blase in the other, is nevertheless admitted to be subject to a potential weightlessness or lift from gravity. And in their separate ways, funny.
And when he takes on the creation of matter, the forerunner of matter, the ethereal, abstract nature of . . . nature emerges and eventually wrestles itself into being, one moment of which from "Mirror Full of Stars", in The Cosmos Poems:
A can of shaving cream inflames
A ping pong ball of lather,
Thick, hot, smaller than an atom, soon
The size of the world . . .
and further down in the same:
Don't play with matches.
The candle flame follows her
With its eyes. The night sky is a mirror
On a wall.
Pick almost anywhere in Cosmos -- at random, from "Forever":
The innocence of the tornado
Of the universe torridly
Twists the universe, the way a clay pot turns
On a potter's wheel languidly
Gaining form, the funnel and the rapturous
Waist swaying slowly
Like a belly dancer at ten million
Miles an hour . . .
The tornado metaphor continues morphing -- "Elephant trunk", "cobra".
Dipping into earlier work, "Stars" in Going Fast:
We fall from stars
In all the color of Brazil,
Of Africa, Iran.
We stir a black hole swirl, star
Figure skaters twirling on the black, galaxies
Unspooling on the surface tension
Of the morning coffee . . .
On and on there's evidence of Seidel's fluid virtuosity.
Oh, he's got plenty of formal control. But he doesn't dine out on it. And even in his poems of recent days (he's in his 70s), there's plenty of surprise wet in the sexuality lying on his sheets next to her lipstick.
His poems praise speed, a tasteful, dangerous high-living, an appreciation for friends whose names likely appear on social register lists and in places of corporate prominence. They smack us with our wants and praise the joys we may only sometimes reach for. And may not ever get to.
The poems from the Cosmos Trilogy may ultimately -- if they're not already thought so -- be considered one of the great works of our time. Seidel's figurations help make intelligible otherwise arcane ideas founded in sophisticated mathematics and astronomy.
I'm not sure whether it's the wealth he was born to or his honesty about human desire and feeling, but he hasn't gotten the fame he deserves. Maybe it's unnecessary.
This has been a lot of words by someone claiming not to be able to handle Seidel. And I haven't.
August 16, 2010
Seidel writes difficult poetry. His poetry seems gleaned from the French surrealists through Frank O'Hara and many have surrealistic ingredients at their center. To me what's so impressive is that he could make it such delightful reading, watching incongruous, ill-matched materials shift and shimmer within a poem and refer to each other until something powerful results. In this way his improvisations light fires in our imaginations and bring a measure of understanding to the world. But still, I don't always get it. I didn't follow, for instance, how the New York City Racquet Club can be linked to the Sarajevo assassination of Franz Ferdinand. At other times they're very intoxicating, as in "Lorraine Motel, Memphis," which mixes sexuality with a transcendant vision of Martin Luther King. Having read assassination in the last 2 sentences you might get the impression his vision is violent. Not overtly. It's Seidel's mischievous heart. About him there's often a trace of evil, campy evil. Sometimes he plays rough and the dark edge of his poems threatens to tip things into a loss of control and chaos. In that way many of these poems reside in a dream, and their reading refuses to be hurried. They require time for examination. These are the poems of 50 years, unusually arranged from newest to oldest, 2009 to 1959, but I didn't feel their artistry diminished or that they became less accomplished as I progressed.
December 14, 2019
"COSMOPOLITANS AT THE PARADISE
Cosmopolitans at the Paradise.
Heavenly Kelly's cosmopolitans make the sun rise.
They make the sun rise in my blood.
Under the stars in my brow.
Tonight a perfect cosmopolitan sets sail for paradise.
Johnny's cosmopolitans start the countdown on the launch pad.
My Paradise is a diner. Nothing could be finer.
There was a lovely man in this town named Harry Diner.
Lighter than zero
Gravity, a rinse of lift, the cosmopolitan cocktail
They mix here at the Paradise is the best
In the United States - pink as a flamingo and life-announcing
As a leaping salmon. The space suit I will squeeze into arrives
In a martini glass.
Poured from a chilled silver shaker beaded with frost sweat.
Finally I go
Back to where the only place to go is far.
Ahab on the launch pad - I'm the roar
Wearing a wild blazer, black stripes and red,
And a yarmulke with a propeller on my missile head.
There she blows! Row harder, my hearties! -
My United Nations of liftoff!
I targeted the great white whale black hole.
On impact I burst into stars.
I am the caliph of paradise,
Hip-deep in a waterbed of wives.
I am the Ducati of desire,
144.1 horsepower at the rear wheel.
Nights and days, black stripes and red,
I orbit Sag Harbor and the big blue ball.
I pursue Moby-Dick to the end of the book.
I raise the pink flamingos to my lips and drink."
Cosmopolitans at the Paradise.
Heavenly Kelly's cosmopolitans make the sun rise.
They make the sun rise in my blood.
Under the stars in my brow.
Tonight a perfect cosmopolitan sets sail for paradise.
Johnny's cosmopolitans start the countdown on the launch pad.
My Paradise is a diner. Nothing could be finer.
There was a lovely man in this town named Harry Diner.
Lighter than zero
Gravity, a rinse of lift, the cosmopolitan cocktail
They mix here at the Paradise is the best
In the United States - pink as a flamingo and life-announcing
As a leaping salmon. The space suit I will squeeze into arrives
In a martini glass.
Poured from a chilled silver shaker beaded with frost sweat.
Finally I go
Back to where the only place to go is far.
Ahab on the launch pad - I'm the roar
Wearing a wild blazer, black stripes and red,
And a yarmulke with a propeller on my missile head.
There she blows! Row harder, my hearties! -
My United Nations of liftoff!
I targeted the great white whale black hole.
On impact I burst into stars.
I am the caliph of paradise,
Hip-deep in a waterbed of wives.
I am the Ducati of desire,
144.1 horsepower at the rear wheel.
Nights and days, black stripes and red,
I orbit Sag Harbor and the big blue ball.
I pursue Moby-Dick to the end of the book.
I raise the pink flamingos to my lips and drink."
June 21, 2022
This is a weighty collection in all senses of the word. Seidel has a quirky, idiosyncratic command of the language, and adroitly jumps from profound insights to profane ones. It's fascinating to see his development as a poet (although the pieces appear in reverse chronological order, so unless you want to Benjamin Button it, you'd do well to read from back to front). Although his poems are not ones which require a great deal of contemplation (much of their attraction is found simply in their wordplay), they are still best read only a few at a time - I had this tome beside my bed for the better part of 6 months while I worked my way through it, little by little.
My only complaint with the collection is that it loses something by including everything - I understand that it spans 50 years of his work, but some of the books from which these poems have been chosen are included in their entirety - a bit of curation could have gone a long way towards making a more manageable, yet still adequately comprehensive, final product.
My only complaint with the collection is that it loses something by including everything - I understand that it spans 50 years of his work, but some of the books from which these poems have been chosen are included in their entirety - a bit of curation could have gone a long way towards making a more manageable, yet still adequately comprehensive, final product.
January 20, 2019
Simultaneously snob and sybarite, gentleman and ghoul, aesthete and asshole, Seidel has forged his own way in American poetry for six decades now - an idiosyncratic, unapologetic, often deliberately provocative talent - and this doorstopping 500 page volume brings together the lion’s share of his prodigious output. This is raw poetry written by a sophisticate, brutal stuff from a man who probably has a set of cuff links for each day of the week. It’s contradictory to the max. Divisive. Poetry that’s not interested in your approbation. Poetry that’s carnivorous and voracious in appetite but knows how to use a dinner service correctly and what the best wines are for each course.
April 12, 2019
Seidel is such a G. His flavor and vivacity are so unique and resounding
May 22, 2020
The best collected poems I’ve ever read. Grounded, surreal, demented, cynical, sentimental, funny, tragic, conservative, progressive, offensive, comforting, obtuse and intimate all at once.
May 2, 2025
I love the way local news, world news, history, and personal story are seamlessly woven together throughout this collection.
September 2, 2025
alright this guy wrote some poems which have led me to retract my insolent remarks....still don't like the bloke
Read
June 8, 2009Read the STOP SMILING review of
Poems 1959-2009
, along with a review of Thom Gunn's Selected Poems (2009, FSG).
It is a special necessity to mention Seidel's biography when discussing his poetry, which is true of all dilettantes, or of those who play them. Seidel is rich, born into it, in fact. One suspects he is the only poet his rarified friends know, and this explains why his often brutal, weird poetry has been employed to commemorate the establishment of the Hayden Planetarium, or the collapse of the World Trade Center in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Read the complete STOP SMILING review...
++
Also, Frederick Seidel is interviewed in the third-annual STOP SMILING 20 Interviews Issue.
It is a special necessity to mention Seidel's biography when discussing his poetry, which is true of all dilettantes, or of those who play them. Seidel is rich, born into it, in fact. One suspects he is the only poet his rarified friends know, and this explains why his often brutal, weird poetry has been employed to commemorate the establishment of the Hayden Planetarium, or the collapse of the World Trade Center in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Read the complete STOP SMILING review...
++
Also, Frederick Seidel is interviewed in the third-annual STOP SMILING 20 Interviews Issue.
August 3, 2011
I've enjoyed dipping into this volume ever since a friend of mine -- a devoted but not academic poet -- brought Frederick Seidel ("the Laureate of the Louches," as an excellent NYTimes Magazine portrait of Seidel put it a few years ago) to my attention. Seidel is intelligent and entertaining. Robert Lowell heralded his first book as the best book of poetry published in the U.S. in decades. That was long ago, of course (1970s?), so you might ask, what happened to the guy? Well, he's kept writing and living in NYC, but few have noticed his gifts. Very few poets excite me like this. I'm glad Steve passed it along.
April 18, 2009
Sometimes horrifying, sometimes mesmerizing.
June 30, 2009
awesome
November 7, 2011
Brilliant. I haven't read everything, but I dip in from time to time. I am especially fond of the Ooga-Booga poems.
Want to read
August 15, 2011Seidel's dark confessional is part seance, calling dark aspects of our private thoughts out to deal with. So far these poems do some dirty (and I feel necessary)work.
February 4, 2013
Newly discovered by me, recently deceased, awesome so far.
July 9, 2012
what could be said that the reviews on the back cover didn't already say
Currently reading
November 27, 2012A brief comment: I'm not reading this book in sequence so my "progress" is misleading. Thus far I like it very much. Hadn't read much Seidel before. Plan to do a full review later.
May 2, 2013
One less motorcycle pane or dick joke would do me. also contains some of my favorite ever poems, so there's that. 'grandson born dead', 'home', forever.
November 14, 2017
If I wanted a resource about how to objectify women, and really a lot of other things, then this would be the dude to turn to. Good at his craft, but oh boy is this not for me.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews