I do think Seidel is a poet of strong lines and stanzas. Take the beginning of "
Miami in the Arctic Circle":
And the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said:
You have cancer.
She could not think how.
No man had been with her.
The poem continues at this level of hilarity for a little while ("You were in my arms / I still had arms") until it ends in something much stranger:
Fiddles and viols, let me hear your old gold.
Trumpets, the petals of the antique rose unfold.
This is the end.
Testing, one, two, three, this is a test.
I mean, I love that ending, but I have no idea what he's talking about in the first two lines. Often I think Seidel is aiming to parody existing styles.
I don't aim to defend all of Seidel's work—I don't think it needs defending—so all I'd say in response to your observation, Edward, is that I don't need every poem to function perfectly. Yes, there are Seidel poems that fall flat: "Racer" might be one of them. But, as you point out, it has some strong points as well.
I agree that "Boys" is among Seidel's finest poems. It's one where he tones down the shock value and lets the content speak for itself.
Maryann, Starbuck is a poet I should check out. I've read a bit of his work, but not a lot of it. His rhyming is ingenious, of course.
One note on Seidel contra Starbuck: for me, a poet like Starbuck—as I so far understand his work—brings pleasure through demonstration of brilliant style and technical ability; we appreciate the genius behind the forms and rhymes. This is a similar pleasure I get from reading Muldoon. However, with Seidel—and his heirs, like Michael Robbins—the pleasure is only partly technical (indeed these poets are technical inferiors to Muldoon and Starbuck). It's also in their implicit critique of current trends in poetry and perception, the way they try to destabilise and upset cliché. Thus, their content I find fascinating.