[Ian Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Edward Zuk

Ian, you are making perfect sense. I think that you’re really on to something in your point #2. I hadn’t considered Seidel’s persona as a rebuke to the Death of the Author, but it makes plenty of sense to do so.

I must admit that I’ve never thought of Seidel as a particularly postmodern poet: his rhythms and straight-forward declarative sentences seem different from the fragmentation and slipperiness of Ashbery or Armantrout, and his concerns seem to lie outside how much language can convey or the fragmentation of identity that fascinate the postmoderns. Instead, I see him responding to the themes and techniques of Eliot or middle Lowell. That said, you may very well have a better feel for his work than I do.

Hmm, I still can't agree with this. That Seidel's rhythms are straightforward declarative sentences is precisely what makes him post-modern: they're too declarative. Take any of his recent work (past 20 years). Enjambment is so infrequent as to be almost inconsequential. Hell, the guy even uses periods to stop lines that would logically be enjambed. It's a send up on confessional / other modern styles, making it distinctly "post" modern. The sheer hyperbole of the whole thing stretches the limits of language--and you can see this especially in a poem like "Pain Management," where he writes "Art throws the dog a bone. / I am ashamed of my poem" as if finding the limits of what poetry can do to "manage pain." Of course that poetry can do anything might be a pre-postmodern outlook, I guess, and of course I agree with you that he's not PoMo in the same way Ashbery or Armantrout are. But fragmentation of identity--or almost the destruction of it--is very Seidelian (harkening back to the death of the author). The largest questions his work asks if precisely related to it, I'd say: who is this person? Can he be real? If he is, what do we do? What would that mean?

Originally Posted by Andrew Mandelbaum

1) I don't find much shock in his stuff. An appeal, maybe rare poetry but pretty much slathered all over plenty of other places. But then again, I don't have some big deal about make it new as much as make it count.

Well, what does 'make it count' mean?

2) I am one who does on fact figure N as the author and because of that finds certain poetic spells and personas extremely unwise and bad mojo. From that you can imagine why I don't like much of his schtick.

Sure, I can imagine why. But I actually also am not a huge proponent of Death of the A. Seidel himself has said that everything in his poems is true. Obviously not literally, but on some level. And who's to say it isn't? Truth is, I agree with the ideology/outlook in much of his poems. The cynicism, the hopelessness. I think Seidel's poems say that: the world is fucked up, let's not deny it. We are all complicit. Change is largely impossible. Maybe writing, and friendship, can help.

That's sobering, but painful. Absolutely.

We don't really need a poet to be a good person? Are you sure? I guess it depends on what the poet is actually doing with his anti-goodness. Not what clever bits his reviewers can imagine but what the words most often tend to evoke and conjure in the world they are set loose upon. I think his stuff trades in an ugly magic. I don't find it free from cliche just because the tropes come from violent less lyric-ed quarters. Violence is the king of been there, done that.

See my point immediately above re: this. The world is violent. Poetry should reflect that.

Adorno: to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Seidel: then my poetry will be barbaric. Barbaric poems for a barbarous world.

3) Not much at stake. Exactly.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to stop you from finding the joy and worth you do in his work. I suspect I am from an extreme distance on this one. Just playing along and sharing my quarter cent.

Or maybe there is something at stake in his work--well, as much as can be at stake in poetry anyway. That's actually how I feel: that Seidel's work acknowledges how little most poetry does and tries to do the best it can.

Just check out "Mr. Delicious" if you want to read a Seidel poem that is absolutely spot on, IMO, in its critique of the way we talk about the Holocaust and suffering in general.