Ooga-Booga: Poems

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"The best American poet writing today"*

"The title itself--a parody of a threat, something the monster under the bed might grunt--manages to capture the weird dialectic of Mr. Seidel's black comedy: He is scary, but funny, but still scary . . . You would have go back to confessional masters like Lowell and Berryman to find poetry as daringly self-revealing, as risky and compelling, as the best of Frederick Seidel's." --*Adam Kirsch, The New York Sun

"The poems in Ooga-Booga are [Seidel's] richest yet and read like no one else's: They're surreal without being especially difficult, and utterly unpretentious, suffused with the peculiar American loneliness of Raymond Chandler . . . [The poem 'Barbados'] is the loveliest Seidel has written to date, and he's perfected the subtle rhythms and rhymes that rocket the stanzas forward like his Ducati 916 SPS. While I can think of a more likable book of poems, I can scarcely imagine a better one." --Alex Halberstadt, New York magazine

"[Ooga-Booga is] as beguiling and magisterial as anything [Seidel] has written. I can't decide whether Seidel has more in common with Philip Larkin or John Ashbery, but the fact that he can prompt such a bizarre question is more revealing than any possible answer." --Joel Brouwer, The New York Times Book Review

Reviews

"The poems in OOGA-BOOGA are [Seidel's] richest yet and read like no one else's: They're surreal without being especially difficult, and utterly unpretentious, suffused with the peculiar American loneliness of Raymond Chandler ... 'Barbados' is the loveliest [poem] Seidel has written to date, and he's perfected the subtle rhythms and rhymes that rocket the stanzas forward like his Ducati 916SPS. While I can think of a more likable book of poems, I can scarcely imagine a better one." --Alex Halberstadt, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

"Having delivered his fin-de-siecle masterpiece, THE COSMOS TRILOGY, in 2003, Seidel could be forgiven for taking it easy this time out, but he needn't be cut any slack: These poems are as beguiling and magisterial as anything the septuagenarian jet-setter has written. I can't decide whether Seidel has more in common with Philip Larkin or John Ashbery, but the fact that he can prompt such a bizarre question is more revealing than any possible answer ... I hope Seidel wears a helmet while riding his beloved Ducati; it would be intolerable to see this great strange brain spilled." --Joel Brouwer, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"I spent that evening with three of Seidel's collections. Some of it was profoundly beautiful . . . This sort of poem was atypical, however. Generally, reading Seidel was like riding shotgun on a Ducati racer . . . Quick propulsive speed and sudden screeching stops, hairpin turns into spooky alleys. His voice and verse were razor-edged . . . The writing willing to say the unsayable." --Philip Connors, N+1

Author Bio

Frederick Seidel's previous books of poems include The Cosmos Trilogy; Final Solutions; Sunrise; These Days; and Poems, 1959-1979. He received the 2002 PEN/Voelker Award for Poetry.