Customer Reviews

Ooga-Booga: Poems

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I came at this book from an unusual perspective. I'm a motorcycle-enthusiast, not a poetry connoisseur, and I heard about the author from a riding-buddy. (He, I and the author all live on Long Island and ride motorcycles.) I'm not the typical consumer of a book of poetry and I approached this one with some apprehension.

That dissolved almost immediately, however, when I got into the writing. It is easily-accessible and hugely entertaining. I found myself enjoying the time spent with a seasoned individual whose unique perspective is not only sagacious but fun. I never expected poetry to tackle subjects of real interest to me (e.g., sex) but this book does. Both the topics and the author's exploration of them amused and enlightened me. Chances are you'll enjoy it, too.

Seidel has no shame, as he shouldn't. No one is spared in this book--politicians, minorities, women, disease patients and happy people are all subject to Seidel's wicked treatment, which is his genius. Seidel is dour and curmudgeonly. Reading a Seidel poem is like hurtling over a cascade of brutal, brilliantly clear images. Whether by their beauty or their despair, each one manages to be frightening. The first reading of a Seidel poem is bound to provoke an intense emotional/visceral response, even among casual readers, while subsequent readings will reveal purebred poetic craft. His honesty insults you, me, and everyone else; anything less would insult art.

I'd been unsuccessful in finding a poet who inhabited my insane urban world; many carried the musty odor of academe, and/or lived in rural areas fomenting images of cows and trees, or in any case couldn't re-invent language to be sufficiently intense, or graphic, or vivid to address our existence. Ashbury and Muldoon were too difficult. Strand was too bland. Greger was only occasionally powerful. Komunyakaa came close but could never quite close the sale.

Then I happened on a review of "Ooga-Booga." And bought it. Bingo!

Why are there only two reviews here? Are Americans so indifferent to poetry, or so sentimentalized as not to recognize the real thing when it slaps them in the face?

I'm unsure exactly where Seidel should be placed in the pantheon: whether he has the gravitas of Yeats or the formal dazzle of ee cummings; perhaps he's just a bit shy of greatness, a la Auden. But whether these poems become classics or whether their big punch will fizzle some with age, they certainly are knockouts now. (Either "The Bush Administration" or "Barbados" would alone have been worth the price of admission) Seidel is the poet for our times: caustic wit, a twistiness of metaphor that can leave you gasping, irreverence, playfulness, a refusal to be bound by the pompous mantle of Literature, a complex understanding of relations between our inner and outer worlds, and--not least--a sense of moral outrage.

"The Cosmos Trilogy" is great too.

Mr. Seidel: stay healthy, keep writing! God knows you're a rare beast.

This is, to put it directly, not only one of the best poetry collections I've ever read but one of the most memorable books I've encountered in my life. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it isn't. Frederick Seidel is an enormously talented poet, and one who takes on serious issues -- but it's his dark sense of humor that sets him apart from almost all his peers.

Modern poetry, in my opinion, has become something of a stuffed shirt, too pretentious, too big for its own britches, though now I'm mixing my metaphors, so shame on me. Too many poets have been conditioned to believe that their work is not substantive if it dares to display any humor.

Seidel is a wonderful exception. If you're easily offended, of course, it's not for you. And even if you aren't, there's a good chance you're going to run across an image or two in these pages that will make you flinch. But one of the jobs of a writer is to challenge existing thinking, morals, attitudes etc. "Ooga-Booga" does just that.