I started reading Seidel about two years ago. I have a mixed reaction to his work: there were lines or stanzas that I liked immediately, but none of his poems strike me as being satisfying as a whole. For example, his poem “Racer” begins with the following:
I spend most of my time not dying.
That’s what living is for.
But then it peters out with this stanza:
Tonight Bologna is fog.
This afternoon, there it was.
With all the mechanics who are making it around it.
It stood on a sort of altar.
I stood in a sort of fog,
Taking digital photographs of my death.
The first five of these lines I find uninspiring, and the last line seems tacked on to grind out a last bit of shock value. Or so it seems to me.
The poems I remember liking best are "Boys" and "December."
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