Also by Frederick Seidel
EVENING MAN
OOGA-BOOGA
THE COSMOS TRILOGY
BARBADOS
AREA CODE 212
LIFE ON EARTH
THE COSMOS POEMS
GOING FAST
MY TOKYO
THESE DAYS
POEMS, 1959–1979
SUNRISE
FINAL SOLUTIONS
POEMS
1959–2009
Frederick Seidel
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2009 by Frederick Seidel
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2009
Evening Man originally appeared as a limited-edition chapbook.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seidel, Frederick, 1936–
[Poems. Selections]
Poems 1959–2009 / Frederick Seidel.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-12655-1 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-374-12655-0 (alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3569.E5 P64 2009
811’.54—dc22
2008047161
Designed by Peter A. Andersen
www.fsgbooks.com
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
CONTENTS
Copyright Notice
EVENING MAN (2008)
Boys
American
In the Mirror
Portia Dew
A Song for Cole Porter
“Sii romantico, Seidel, tanto per cambiare”
Bipolar November
Miami in the Arctic Circle
Coconut
Marriage
Ode to Spring
Home
I Own Nothing
I’m Here This
Italy
Mr. Delicious
Mu’allaqa
Darkening in the Dark
The Death of Anton Webern
Weirdly Warm Day in January
Pain Management
Do You Doha?
Sunlight
In a Previous Life
Evening Man
My Poetry
Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin
OOGA-BOOGA (2006)
Kill Poem
From Nijinsky’s Diary
Violin
Nectar
On Being Debonair
Homage to Pessoa
For Holly Andersen
Fog
A Red Flower
Dick and Fred
New Year’s Day, 2004
The Italian Girl
The Big Golconda Diamond
What Are Movies For?
The Owl You Heard
E-mail from an Owl
White Butterflies
The Castle in the Mountains
A Fresh Stick of Chewing Gum
Dante’s Beatrice
Bologna
Racer
At a Factory in Italy
France for Boys
Grandson Born Dead
Death
East Hampton Airport
A White Tiger
Cloclo
Laudatio
To Die For
Barbados
Climbing Everest
Organized Religion
Mother Nature
Broadway Melody
Love Song
Breast Cancer
Rilke
Casanova Getting Older
Il Duce
I Am Siam
The Big Jet
The Black-Eyed Virgins
Eurostar
Song: “The Swollen River Overthrows Its Banks”
Drinking in the Daytime
The Bush Administration
The Death of the Shah
THE COSMOS TRILOGY (2003)
The Cosmos Poems (2000)
1. Into the Emptiness
2. Mirror Full of Stars
3. Who the Universe Is
4. Universes
5. Black Stovepipe Hat
6. The Childhood Sunlight
7. Beyond the Event Horizon
8. Blue and Pink
9. Galaxies
10. Feminists in Space
11. This New Planetarium
12. Invisible Dark Matter
13. A Twittering Ball
14. The Star
15. Special Relativity
16. Take Me to Infinity
17. Poem
18. Supersymmetry
19. Everything
20. Happiness
21. The Eleven Dimensions
22. The Royal Palm
23. Faint Galaxy
24. Edward Witten
25. The Birth of the Universe
26. Starlight
27. Quantum Mechanics
28. It Is the Morning of the Universe
29. Forever
30. Forever
31. Forever
32. The Last Remaining Angel
33. In the Green Mountains
Life on Earth (2001)
34. Bali
35. French Polynesia
36. The Opposite of a Dark Dungeon
37. Star Bright
38. Goodness
39. Joan of Arc
40. Doctor Love
41. Fever
42. Blood
43. Holly Andersen
44. At New York Hospital
45. Drinks at the Carlyle
46. Chiquita Gregory
47. To Start at End
48. We Have Ignition
49. Eternity
50. The Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal
51. In Spite of Everything
52. Springtime
53. Summer
54. Fall Snowfall
55. Christmas
56. Cosmopolitans at the Paradise
57. Sex
58. Song
59. The Seal
60. Her Song
61. Green Dress, 1999
62. Letter to the Editors of Vogue
63. James Baldwin in Paris
64. St. Louis, Missouri
65. Hamlet
66. Frederick Seidel
Area Code 212 (2002)
67. I Do
68. The Bathroom Door
69. Downtown
70. The Serpent
71. Getaway
72. Nothing Will
73. pH
74. Venus
75. Nigra Sum
76. Rain in Hell
77. Dido with Dildo
78. January
79. February
80. In Cap Ferrat
81. March
82. Easter
83. April
84. May
85. Venus Wants Jesus
86. MV Agusta Rally, Cascina Costa, Italy
87. June
88. June Allyson and Mae West
89. July
90. Hugh Jeremy Chisholm
91. August
92. September
93. The Tenth Month
94. Fall
95. October
96. November
97. God Exploding
98. The Wa
r of the Worlds
99. December
100. One Hundred
GOING FAST (1998)
For a New Planetarium
Midnight
Prayer
The Night Sky
Stars
The Stars Above the Empty Quarter
Contents Under Pressure
New York
At Gracie Mansion
The Pierre Hotel, New York, 1946
Hotel Carlyle, New York
Das Kapital
Christmas
Mood Indigo
Noon
Spring
Dune Road, Southampton
London
In Memoriam
The Great Depression
Paris & Tahiti
The Ballad of La Palette
Anyone with the Wish
The Resumption of Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific
Faster
A Gallop to Farewell
A Vampire in the Age of AIDS
Another Muse
Red Guards of Love
Yankee Doodle
Ovid, Metamorphoses X, 298–518
Heart Art
Spin
Puberty
The Infinite
True Story
Hot Night, Lightning
The Storm
Little Song
Eisenhower Years
Victory
Vermont
Milan
Racine
Milan
Bologna
A Pretty Girl
Going Fast
Going Fast
MY TOKYO (1993)
To the Muse
From a High Floor
The Hour
Hair in a Net
Rackets
The Complete Works of Anton Webern
The Ritz, Paris
Untitled
Glory
The Empress Rialto
Lorraine Motel, Memphis
The New Woman
The Former Governor of California
Life After Death
Sonnet
Burkina Faso
Pol Pot
Stroke
Chartres
Autumn
The Lighting of the Candles
The Lover
The
The Death of Meta Burden in an Avalanche
The Second Coming
My Tokyo
Recessional
THESE DAYS (1989)
Scotland
Flame
Our Gods
Empire
The New Cosmology
A Row of Federal Houses
That Fall
A Dimpled Cloud
The Blue-Eyed Doe
On Wings of Song
Morphine
Elms
The Final Hour
Jane Canfield (1897–1984)
The Little White Dog
AIDS Days
Gethsemane
Stanzas
Early Sunday Morning in the Cher
The Last Poem in the Book
SUNRISE (1980)
1968
Death Valley
The Trip
The Room and the Cloud
The Soul Mate
Sunrise
“Not to Be Born Is Obviously Best of All”
To Robert Lowell and Osip Mandelstam
Finals
Men and Woman
Fucking
Pressed Duck
What One Must Contend With
Homage to Cicero
Descent into the Underworld
A Beautiful Day Outside
Years Have Passed
The Girl in the Mirror
Fever
Erato
De Sade
The New Frontier
November 24, 1963
Freedom Bombs for Vietnam (1967)
Robert Kennedy
The Drill
Hamlet
The Future
Wanting to Live in Harlem
The Last Entries in Mayakovsky’s Notebook
Hart Crane Near the End
FINAL SOLUTIONS (1963)
Wanting to Live in Harlem
A Widower
The Coalman
A Negro Judge
The Heart Attack
Dayley Island
Thanksgiving Day
A Year Abroad
“The Beast Is in Chains”
Spring
Americans in Rome
The Walk There
To My Friend Anne Hutchinson
After the Party
The Sickness
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines
EVENING MAN (2008)
BOYS
Sixty years after, I can see their smiles,
White with Negro teeth, and big with good,
When one or the other brought my father’s Cadillac out
For us at the Gatesworth Garage.
RG and MC were the godhead,
The older brothers I dreamed I had.
I didn’t notice they were colored,
Because older boys capable of being kind
To a younger boy are God.
It is absolutely odd
To be able to be with God.
I can almost see their faces, but can’t quite.
I remember how blazingly graceful they were,
And that they offered to get me a girl so I could meet God.
I have an early memory of a black chauffeur,
Out of his livery,
Hosing down a long black Packard sedan, sobbing.
Did it happen? It took place
In Portland Place.
I remember the pink-soled gum boots
That went with the fellow’s very pink gums
And very white teeth, while he washed
The Packard’s whitewalls white
And let them dry, sobbing,
Painting on liquid white with an applicator afterward.
Later that afternoon he resumed his chauffeur costume,
A darky clad in black under the staring sun.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died.
On the other hand, Ronny Banks was light-skinned.
He worked as a carhop at Medart’s drive-in.
He was well-spoken, gently friendly.
He was giving a party, but I didn’t go.
I actually drove there, but something told me no.
I suddenly thought he was probably a homo.
I drank my face off, age fifteen.
I hit the bars
In the colored section to hear jazz.
I raved around the city in my father’s cars,
A straight razor who, wherever he kissed, left scars.
I was violently heterosexual and bad.
I used every bit of energy I had.
Where, I wonder, is Ronny Banks now?
I remember a young man, whose name I have forgotten,
Who was exceedingly neat,
Always wearing a white shirt,
Always standing there jet-black in our living room.
How had this been allowed to happen?
Who doesn’t hate a goody-goody young Christian?
My father and uncle underwrote the boy’s education.
He was the orphaned son of a minister.
He sang in the church choir.
He was exemplary, an exemplar.
But justice was far away, very far.
Justice was really an ashtray to display
The lynched carcass of a stubbed-out cigar,
Part brown, part black, part stink, part ash.
When I was a little boy,
My father had beautiful manners,
A perfect haughty gentleman,
Impeccable with everyone.
In labor relations with the various unions,
For example, he apparently had no peer.
It was not so much that he w
as generous,
I gather, but rather that he was fair.
So it was a jolt, a jolt of joy,
To hear him cut the shit
And call a black man Boy.
The white-haired old Negro was a shoeshine boy.
One of the sovereign experiences of my life was my joy
Hearing my father in a fury call the man Boy.
Ronny Banks, faggot prince, where are you now?
RG and MC, are you already under headstones
That will finally reveal your full
Names, whatever they were?
RG, the younger brother, was my hero who was my friend.
I remember our playing
Catch in the rain for hours on a rainy weekend.
It is a question
Of when, not a question of whether,
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed
And all flesh shall cease together.
A black woman came up to my father.
All the colored people in this city know who you are.
God sent you to us. Thank God for your daddy, boy.
AMERICAN
My face had been sliced off
And lay there on the ground like a washcloth
With my testicles and penis
Next to it.
The car had Wyoming plates.
I’d been to Colorado but not Wyoming,
Which I gather is beautiful.
The other one I hadn’t seen was Utah.
Someone had carefully cut under it and lifted it off,
I suppose to obliterate the identity,
Except had left it out in the open.
It looked like a latex glove but also someone’s face.
She told me she had always loved me.
I was the happy ending of a fairy tale.
She would recognize my penis anywhere,
Even on the ground.
IN THE MIRROR
I’m back at Claridge’s, room 427,
And in the mirror find a bit of heaven.
It isn’t plastic surgery that makes
Me look like you—two heartless dashing rakes!
You’re me, not you—you’re me but modified
To look like you and in the throes of. Why’d
I ever think that we were ocean waves?
We’re stingrays winging through the warmth with raves
From every mermaid who reviews us. Hush!
There’s someone coming! Hamlet talking lush
Escape routes to the upper world. The ray,
Whose stinger walks behind, doth kneel and pray.
Art deco Claridge’s is Fred Astaire’s
Lighthearted bee sting love affairs. She cares!
The stinger sticking out from Baudelaire’s
Check trousers is a poem that despairs.
His pain is palpable. It can’t be pain,
This gentle sound of sweetly London rain.
I wouldn’t dream of plastic surgery
Unless it somehow helped the poetry.
Prince Hamlet’s dressed in flowing black. The black
Poems 1959-2009 Page 1