Frederick Seidel Knihy

"You Can't Like Seidel's Poems--They're Deliberately Virulent; You Can Only Gasp At Their Skill And Daring, Their Sickening Warp, Their Mercilessness."*Frederick Seidel's highly acclaimed Cosmos Trilogy is a triple thunderclap of darkness from the poet whom Richard Poirier has recently called "the true heir of Walt Whitman" and of whose first book Robert Lowell wrote "[I] suspect the possibilities of modern poetry have been changed. Here is power that strikes." Reversing the course of Dante's Divine Comedy , Seidel's trilogy begins in the heavens, with The Cosmos Poems , and descends, passing through the Purgatorio of Life on Earth to arrive in Manhattan in Area Code 212 .

The collected poems showcase the mastery of Frederick Seidel, featuring a blend of compelling, savage, and tender themes. Renowned for his unique voice, Seidel's work is celebrated for its emotional depth and sharpness, earning him recognition as one of the foremost American poets of his time, as noted by critic Adam Kirsch.

"The best American poet writing today"* "The title itself—a parody of a threat, something the monster under the bed might grunt—manages to capture the weird dialectic of Mr. Seidel's black comedy: He is scary, but funny, but still scary . . . You would have go back to confessional masters like Lowell and Berryman to find poetry as daringly self-revealing, as risky and compelling, as the best of Frederick Seidel's." —*Adam Kirsch, The New York Sun "The poems in Ooga-Booga are [Seidel's] richest yet and read like no one else's: They're surreal without being especially difficult, and utterly unpretentious, suffused with the peculiar American loneliness of Raymond Chandler . . . [The poem ‘Barbados'] is the loveliest Seidel has written to date, and he's perfected the subtle rhythms and rhymes that rocket the stanzas forward like his Ducati 916 SPS. While I can think of a more likable book of poems, I can scarcely imagine a better one." —Alex Halberstadt, New York magazine "[ Ooga-Booga is] as beguiling and magisterial as anything [Seidel] has written. I can't decide whether Seidel has more in common with Philip Larkin or John Ashbery, but the fact that he can prompt such a bizarre question is more revealing than any possible answer." —Joel Brouwer, The New York Times Book Review

“One of the world’s most inspired and unusual poets . . . [Seidel’s] poems are a triumph of cosmic awe in the face of earthly terror.” —Hillel Italie, USA Today Frederick Seidel has been called many things. A “transgressive adventurer,” “a demonic gentleman,” a “triumphant outsider,” “a great poet of innocence,” and “an example of the dangerous Male of the Species,” just to name a few. Whatever you choose to call him, one thing is certain: “he radiates heat” ( The New Yorker ). Now add to that: the poet of aging and decrepitude. Widening Income Inequality , Seidel’s new poetry collection, is a rhymed magnificence of sexual, historical, and cultural exuberance, a sweet and bitter fever of Robespierre and Obamacare and Apollinaire, of John F. Kennedy and jihadi terror and New York City and Italian motorcycles. Rarely has poetry been this true, this dapper, or this dire. Seidel is “the most poetic of the poets and their leader into hell.”

Britain's most prestigious literary magazine brings you the very best new fiction, memoir, reportage, poetry, photography and art from around the world. Granta consistently publishes innovative and prize-winning writing in each quarterly issue, such as 'Rain' by Colin Barrett and 'The Room-Service Waiter' by Tom Crewe (both winners of the 2024 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction), as well as 'Theories of Care' by Sophie Mackintosh, which won the 2024 Pushcart Prize.