Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2007), Edition: 1st, 112 pages
Description
From the winner of the PEN/Voelker Award, poems of love, terror, rage, and desire. Here I am, not a practical man, But clear-eyed in my contact lenses, Following no doubt a slightly different line than the others, Seeking sexual pleasure above all else, Despairing of art and of life, Seeking protection from death by seeking it On a racebike, finding release and belief on two wheels . . .--from "The Death of the Shah" The poems in Ooga-Booga are about a youthful slave owner and his aging slave, and both are the same man. This is the tenderest, most savage collection yet from "the most frightening American poet ever" (Calvin Bedient, Boston Review).
Media reviews
In Seidel’s poetry, privilege and wealth do not effectively insulate the speaker from third-world genocide, terrorism, and starvation; quite the opposite—those horrors are amplified. One could read many thriving American poets and not know that there is a world outside the daily
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suburban routine of the poet, much less one in which war and deprivation define the lives of whole populations. In this respect, Seidel, as glib as he might seem in any given line, is more engaged with the state of the world than most American poets. Further, the excesses outlined in the poems cannot truly be considered remarkable in a nation where obesity is epidemic and pornography a multi-billion dollar industry. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member est-lm
These poems are definitely not for the prudish or the fainthearted. Seidel's poems are raw, savage, fearless, with a lyrical beauty that makes the whole collection twisted. He writes about what horrifies many with musical bluntness. A wild ride from start to finish.
"While I can think of a more
"While I can think of a more
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likable book of poems, I ca scarcely imagine a better one..." Alex Halberstadt, New York Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
A dual-review of 'Evening Man' and 'Ooga-Booga.'
Yet more evidence that honest reportage from the disaffected has more critical force than puritanical censorship: it's impossible to read this and feel anything but disgust for Seidel, his world (i.e., the ultra-rich), and the world surrounding that
And formally, he's a breath of fresh air: none of your precise, non-rhythmic patter; no hesitation in throwing in cliched rhymes if they'll get the job done; willing to find the tunes in words from anywhere (bad pop song rhythm; good hip-hop rhythm; Eliotesque slides and so on). Where most poets seem to think sentences are either logocentric impositions on their own free spirit, or that syntax is for other people, Seidel makes do with almost Hemingway-levels of minimalism, as in this final stanza of 'Ode to Spring':
"I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface."
The poems in this book mostly avoid neat closure, as here, where a trimeter would have made more conventional sense; I found this frustrating, but of course, that's the point.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading 'Evening Man' and 'Ooga-Booga' back to back; the unvarying themes (which Seidel himself pokes fun at) aren't entirely saved by the varying forms, and by the end I was ready for something else.
Yet more evidence that honest reportage from the disaffected has more critical force than puritanical censorship: it's impossible to read this and feel anything but disgust for Seidel, his world (i.e., the ultra-rich), and the world surrounding that
Show More
world, in which everything is for sale, for the purposes of sex and hedonism. He's a bit like Houllebecq, if Houllebecq was much smarter and a better writer, and was a poet, rather than a novelist with poetry on the side. And formally, he's a breath of fresh air: none of your precise, non-rhythmic patter; no hesitation in throwing in cliched rhymes if they'll get the job done; willing to find the tunes in words from anywhere (bad pop song rhythm; good hip-hop rhythm; Eliotesque slides and so on). Where most poets seem to think sentences are either logocentric impositions on their own free spirit, or that syntax is for other people, Seidel makes do with almost Hemingway-levels of minimalism, as in this final stanza of 'Ode to Spring':
"I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface."
The poems in this book mostly avoid neat closure, as here, where a trimeter would have made more conventional sense; I found this frustrating, but of course, that's the point.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading 'Evening Man' and 'Ooga-Booga' back to back; the unvarying themes (which Seidel himself pokes fun at) aren't entirely saved by the varying forms, and by the end I was ready for something else.
Show Less
Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Poetry — 2006)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Poetry — 2006)
Poetry Book Society Choice and Recommendation (Recommendation — 2009.2)
Griffin Poetry Prize (Finalist — International — 2007)
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
112 p.; 8.5 inches
ISBN
0374530971 / 9780374530976