Frederick Seidel’s latest collection is Peaches Goes It Alone.
Stray dogs with a red plastic tag in one ear Have been licensed By the city to be safe and allowed to live in the street, So they wander around, or more likely just lie there, Healthy, checked by a city vet, without a care. They’re red-tagged Turks and they’re an elite. You walk past them in the street. They’re bums, they’re the homeless, not educated. It’s...
I see you in the morning and I see you in the evening. That doesn’t stop the other things. The shorebirds and the shellfish make merry in the giant oil spill. The fire drill bell rings and rings and rings. Not everyone who wants to will. I see you in the morning and I see you in the evening.
It’s back to school. And, in our district, it is time to vote. It’s time to...
The woman who’s dying is trying to lose her life. It’s a great adventure For everyone trying to help her. Actually, death avoids her, doesn’t want to hurt her.
So to speak, opens her hand and gently takes away the knife Everyone well-meaning wants her to use on herself. There is no knife, of course. And she’s too weak.
If you’re too ill, the clinic near Zurich...
I’m not on your side, whichever side you’re on. My enthusiasm for Nasser is long gone. Hail, Hosni Mubarak, and farewell! There’s the old dictator dolt On TV, a contraption of dyed hair and hair gel. Angels in revolt Fill Tahrir Square. The angel Gabriel blows his horn To announce to the reborn, You’ve been born! And Koranically commands, Recite!Here are the things...
I impersonate myself and here I am, Prick pointing at the moon, teeth sunk into your calf. I ought to warn the concrete that my passion dooms the dam. The poem I’m writing looks up at me and starts to laugh.
Summer! Of course you are! You are my miracle! Just now we were in Rome. I have to be in Rome with you to be so lyrical – Or else it’s noon Alaska-time, the Auschwitz...
Frederick Seidel reads his poem ‘In Late December’.
‘A perfect week for digging up the block.’ Frederick Seidel reads his poem ‘Trump for President!’.
A popular clip on YouTube shows a local news reporter trying to interview a costume-shop owner who’d been charged with cyberstalking. The woman is dressed as a giant rabbit and refuses to...
Whether in person or in print, self-consciousness is unsettling. Self-conscious writers, like self-conscious speakers, can’t help betraying that they’re more concerned with their...
A year or two ago, Geoffrey Hartman urged literary critics to declare their independence. They should not regard criticism as an activity secondary to the literature it addressed, but as an art...
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.