I have no business writing this. What little I know about poetry comes from what I learned in school (thank you, Ken) and from the stray volumes I pick up in bookstores, volumes I take home and dip into with pleasure but no particular discipline. Criticism hasn’t necessarily increased my knowledge. Most of the critics who write about poetry are academics and seem to write for people who already know the subject. The great exception is Dwight Garner in the New York Times, who follows the now mostly abandoned tradition of writing for the intelligent general reader who wants to learn something he doesn’t know.
In some way it seems fitting that I’m going to attempt to write on Frederick Seidel, a poet who has given me much pleasure and who many people seem to think has no business writing anything at all. It’s not so much that Seidel’s reputation precedes him, as the character he has created does. That character is a kind of late twentieth-century Red Death roaring up to the masque on a custom Ducati, in an immaculately tailored suit, sprinkling a mixture of witticisms and barnyard rut and thoroughly enjoying himself as the weaker souls around him get the faints or succumb to the reaper his very appearance seems to herald. This makes it easy for the reader (or the critic) to choose the appropriate attitude to strike re Seidel—shock or knowing amusement—rather than engaging with the work.
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