Ruth R. got me started on Seidel because she read this
article in the New York Times. I read the article and was convinced I should read the poems and decide for myself whether he was a scallywag or an unsung brilliant poet. No question he's brilliant, but I have mixed feelings about his work.


OMG Yes

As I remember from the article, the main objections to his work were it was about rich people, and his tone was too sinister or unapologetic. Neither bothered me. At least so far.

I read the first poem in this book "Boys," and went, wait, I've read this before and recently, but I can't remember where. It must have been in some anthology about racism or gay stuff. (I just figured it out: Harper's May 2008). I remember thinking it was brilliant then and it's still mind boggling brilliant. I like the subject matter: the history of racism in our country. I like how he gets to it through personal experience, ones I really will never have (watching the hired "boys" wash the family car). I like how it's honest about all the emotions, including the delight in the word. It's complex and clear and has poetry stuff going on like rhyme and repeated images. None of the other poems have hit me as strongly as this one, but I'm only twenty poems in.


Not quite my cup of tea

I've come to appreciate surrealism late in my poetry life. It's still a struggle for me. So when a poem starts out "My face had been sliced off" I have to hold on to my hat and get ready for a bumpy ride. Part of me wants to scream, but that doesn't make sense! On the other hand, I love the poem Home, and that has the speaker putting the dog "in a two-fifty oven to scream for three hours." Hopefully, that is surreal.

Huh?

He's seriously heavy handed with the end rhyme.

Women have a playground slide
That wraps you in monsoon and takes you for a ride.
The English girl Louise, his latest squeeze, was being snide.
Easy to deride
The way he stayed alive to stay inside
His women with his puffed-up pride

From Sii Romantico, Seidel, Tanto per Cambiare

It's just not done these days. A sonnet is supposed to be so subtle the reader doesn't even realize she's reading a sonnet, an underlying music. His is right out there blatting away. It makes him sound like a moon in June beginner, but, of course, we know he's not, so he must be doing it on purpose, so it must have a purpose. I'm willing to grant him strong craft, but it's not working for me.

Holocaust imagery

Sylvia Plath got away with it in "Daddy," and she's not even Jewish. Seidel is Jewish, but I still find Holocaust imagery overwhelming.

Gooey Jew
From the twentieth century's
24/7 chimney's, choo-choo
Train puffs of white smoke rise.
The trains waddle full of cattle to the camps.

From Mr. Delicious

And it's not just this poem. It's a theme with him.

I object to Holocaust imagery on several grounds.

1. It's sacred and few people have the right to it. Most of us don't have the right to take someone else's immense suffering and use it as material in our poems. Oh look, I know how to sound furious and bitter, I'll mention Nazis. Anytime someone uses the term Nazi in daily life like book Nazi or hand washing Nazi, I get equally incensed. I'm sure there are plenty of subjects that those not involved do not have a right to use. I'm thinking of Michael Dickman's book I just read which has fathers beating their sons and sons shooting heroin at age 12. I couldn't put that in my poem; I have no right. Now, I have been writing about the Aztecs sacrificing their children. Hopefully, I'm using it not to vilify the Aztecs, but to create insight into my own life. So, I'm not sure where the line is, but for me, the Holocaust is over the line.

2. It's just too cliche--we know how we are supposed to feel when the word Dachau shows up. It's like the converse of "love" or "dream." Those are cheating words that assume the reader will know how to feel. They're boring.

3. It's just too big. Once the Holocaust shows up in a poem, it takes over. I grant Seidel does a cool slide in Mr. Delicious from the white smoke of the crematoriums to the white smoke of the College of Cardinals picking a new pope, but once the camps showed up, I never really left.

So, this review is mostly based on the first half of his latest book, not a fair shake, but I can happily say, Ruth R., go read it, let's talk.