Frederick Seidel Selected Poems

"Seidel is among the rare poets who’ve become noticeably better—nervier, more tricksy and electric—as they’ve slid into old age . . . He’s the Dark Prince of American poetry, a writer of glittering malice, one who cuts against the grain of almost every variety of community feeling. He’s not a poet for everyone, but no poet worth anything is . . . Meticulous and sublime."—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"This selected, spanning half a century, demonstrates that Seidel’s renegade candor has only sharpened with age. With an erudite lexicon, staccato and ambling vignettes, and a frequently debonair tone, Seidel’s poems combine the sensibilities of the Greatest Generation and the Beats. They document a lust for life through a blunt and sensual dreamscape punctuated by labyrinthine conceits . . . This book offers a slice of Seidel’s life: the amorous, the dark, the indulgent, and the restless mind captured by a master of craft."—Publishers Weekly