by Frederick Seidel
Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2006
Reviewed by Melinda Wilson

An Exopthalmic, Psychosexual Animal

As if the photograph on the cover wasn’t enough to scare me, Seidel’s opening poem in his latest—Ooga-Booga­­—is titled “Kill Poem.” All right, my hopes weren’t high, but as I started to read the poem, I got into it. I’m a sucker for animals or “the animal,” which, I think, is a befitting title for Seidel, and “Kill Poem” is certainly packed with the animalistic: “of the chased-down fox bleeding its stink across the snow.” So, it’s a hunting poem?

But, the title gives away the fact that there’s more to this poem than hunting foxes and deer. The poem quickly evolves into a political commentary: “Winter, spring, Baghdad, fall,” “I am in a killing field,” “I am civilized but / I see the silence.” By the end of the poem, I’m stunned, but left with the question, what exactly is poetry’s role in this killing? I never really found out.

Seidel shows in Ooga-Booga that he is a technical poet. Many of his lines are end-stopped and even when the thought hasn’t been completed the line is stopped with a period. The emphatic building this induces creates a certain tension in the poem that grows, but somehow never climaxes. The tension is a constant until the final, harrowing lines of the book: “Open the mummy case of this text respectfully. / You find no one inside.” And even then there is still the closing of the book followed by the final glare of the cover photograph.

Even when Seidel is at his most technical, stern, or shuddersome, he manages to find room for humor, as in “Fog”: “The Lord is my shepherd and the Director of Superbike Racing.” The obvious allusion to the 23rd psalm—which reappears in a later poem “East Hampton Airport”—combined with Seidel’s fanaticism for Superbike Racing makes this line fantastically funny. This is a common gimmick of Seidel’s—filching famed lines—and though his efforts are sometimes successful, too often they fall short as in “E-mail from an Owl” (which I think we can all agree is a damn good title). The poem is humorous as you might imagine and about half way through it invokes the Lord’s Prayer.  Discussing an irrigation system, said line reads, “Drip us this day our daily bread, or rather this night.” Get it? Drip? Yeah, anyway…

My other problem with Seidel’s sense of funny is his consistent reliance on gross-out jokes. These types of jokes stopped working on me around age 12, but maybe it’s different for men. The poem “Dick and Fred” has one line in particular that I can’t find justification for. Here it is: “Holofernes’ startled head farts blood.” Ugh… Holofernes is a figure from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith. As you probably guessed, he was beheaded (while drunk by the seductress Judith; shameful.). But still. Farts? Really? Not to mention the fact that the line “cunt with a dick” is repeated throughout the poem. Real classy. Perhaps a worse line appears in “Barbados.” “Diarrhea in a condom is the outcome.” Who is this guy?

If you haven’t heard of him, know he’s been in the game a long time, and has a reputation as sort of a New York City recluse. What I can say for him is that his wit is unique, often punny with lines like “cheerily suicidal, so sui-Seidel.” I agree; this is funny. Another example would be from “The Death of the Shah” in which Seidel writes, “I remember the Duck and Duckess of Windsor. / You could entertain them in your house.” Hilarity.  And if you find sexual imagery or graphic reference to the body interesting than this book is a must read. Also in “The Death of the Shah,” Seidel confesses “Here I am, not a practical man / …Seeking sexual pleasure above all else…” I believe that.

When not preoccupied with functions of the anus, Seidel’s explorations could be described as psychosexual (emphasis on psycho). He writes about a racer being a wonderful sexual partner with the exception of its lack of tits in “Dante’s Beatrice” and about his allegedly “dynamite penis” in “Climbing Everest.” And check out these lines from “Mother Nature”: “Mother nature went to China / China the vagina.” Okay, that’s enough.

Nevertheless, comedy or comedic attempts don’t dominate the book. And often the humor is a stab at reaching a far more serious sentiment. Perhaps anger or frustration. Ooga-Booga delves into the grave state of the nation. It makes repeated reference to the 9-11 attacks, the War in Iraq, and none of them taken lightly, but rather weighted with, from what I can gather, shame and opposition. The book even contains a poem titled “The Bush Administration.” The poem is in eight parts, maybe one for each dreadful year… But let’s not forget that when Seidel is funny, he’s the funniest. I’ll leave you with the whole of my favorite poem from Ooga-Booga:

I am Siam

I saw the moon in the sky at sunset over a river pink as a ham.
I am the governess imported from England by me,
The widowed King of Siam.
I drop down on one knee.
I want to marry me.
Where you are I am.
Là où tu es je suis. Où tu es je suis.
I drop down on one knee.
I want to marry me.
I do a saut de chat at sunset over a silver spoon of jam.
Jam for the royal children, Felicity
And Sam.
I am the English governess imported from England by me.
I am the widowed King of Siam! The widowed King of Siam!

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