Hugh Seidman

Horace warned poets to "reject any poem much time and much erasing have not refined." So Seidman's refined his considerable talents down to only five books, including this SELECTED, in 30 years. The result, as he predicted in an early poem, is "The total life/ in the nuance of line." The life: anger, the word sung, laughter, the love and loss of family, and sexual love and loss of it. The line: enduring as any monument.
--The Village Voice

The poems...are exquisitely crafted, every detail rendered with precision and honesty.
--Susan Shapiro
The St. Petersburg Times

Hugh Seidman has published many beautiful books, none more glorious than his latest, SELECTED POEMS: 1965-1995. Poetry lovers will want this one.
--The New York Daily News

A great book by one of the best American poets. "The Great Ego of the Words" must be one of our most moving poems. Every poetry collection will need Seidman.
--Book News

Whether adding new elegies for both father and mother, rethinking our use of napalm thirty years ago, or looking at photos of present-day atrocities, Seidman's voice contains a unique combination of ecstasy and anguish.
--American Book Review

...autobiographical, historical, mythological, psychological, religious and scientific contents...answer for trauma. Partly instructed by Zukofsky, partly indebted to Vallejo, Seidman comingles modes from Objectivism and Surrealism in an edgy shorthand.
--Kenneth Warren
House Organ

SELECTED POEMS: 1965-1995* was chosen as one of the Village Voice's "25 Favorite Books of 1995" and was listed as one of the top 10 poetry books of the year - the only book published by a university press - by a panel of professional literary critics from such places as The Chicago Tribune, Esquire, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Review of Books, and The Washington Post.

*Contains work from: PEOPLE LIVE, THEY HAVE LIVES; THRONE/FALCON/EYE; BLOOD LORD; and COLLECTING EVIDENCE.

DID I SAY FATHER?

Tears "burst" from the eyes.
This is the duty of words.

Is silence better?
To look down in the street.

The world is like bread.
Mouths water.

Forgive me if I lift my hand to affirm.
Or is it to question?

Mother had been a blind date.
Love at first sight.

Dirt below black birds.
None to corroborate the fox trot.

--From "New Poems" section of
   SELECTED POEMS: 1965-1995

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SELECTED POEMS: 1965-1995 is published by the Miami University Press (Oxford, OH).

For more information or to order the book, click the "Quick Link" in the next column.