Interview With the Poet Frederick Seidel, the Author of “So What"
By the Book
Frederick Seidel’s New Book Includes an Ode to Nick Cave
“The material that he uses for the songs is powerfully moving, involving his own personal losses,” the 88-year-old poet says. Also name-checked in “So What”: an Italian motorcycle magnate.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
There isn’t one. The true answer is in a comfortable chair.
What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?
I’ve learned everything and not very much. Not recently, but when I began writing poetry the two poets who taught and influenced me the most were Ezra Pound and Robert Lowell. In the case of Pound, the incomprehensible music of it, the reach and the size of the ambition, and the way the poetry finds moments of great simplicity and sweetness. In the case of Lowell, so many different things I learned and imitated from him. And otherwise it’s been many poets, everybody.
What books are on your night stand?
I like that — “night stand” — old-fashioned. Right now: Yukio Mishima’s book “Patriotism,” a silly piece of work; “The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz”; the essays of Frank Kermode. Around as well are “Voyage in the Dark,” by Jean Rhys, and Joseph Roth’s novel “Flight Without End.” “The Little Auto,” a children’s book by Lois Lenski. “The Rest Is Noise,” by Alex Ross, and Louis Menand’s “The Free World.” “Skyfaring,” by Mark Vanhoenacker — I have a thing about speed, about flying, motorcycles, Formula 1, but especially motorcycles. I’ve written a lot of poems that I suppose are unusual for including motorcycles in them, with the emphasis on Italian ones, and a particular joy in the beauty and vast speed of them. I’ve spent a lot of time in Bologna near the Ducati factory, which made a racing motorcycle for me.
Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?
I must have as a boy. I remember very much enjoying Maurice Girodias’s banned books in Paris that included Henry Miller and other distinguished authors. Girodias was himself a naughty delight. He printed the unprintable.
What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?
I suppose Philip Roth’s “Sabbath’s Theater.” My favorite of his novels, a work of genius. I’m not a big reader-laugher.
The last book that made you furious?
“The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz” made me furious, the thought of his tragic life. The first poems are marvelous, and how much trouble there is with the enormous rest of the book. Such a gifted man, and so terrible a life.
Which contemporary poets do you enjoy reading?
I like Michael Hofmann, Nick Cave and Anne Carson. He’s not alive but I delight in John Ashbery’s work, the drift and sway and music of it. Other than that I tend to move back in time — I’m a great admirer of Mandelstam and Montale. D.H. Lawrence, the author of the astonishing novella “St. Mawr,” is a very fine poet I admire, who rarely gets mentioned for his poetry. The poems of places and landscapes have a pithiness and astringency and life that are very pleasing.
How have your reading tastes changed over time?
I now read drastically fewer novels. An emphasis on poetry, ancient and contemporary. I’ve been rereading Montale, in Jonathan Galassi’s excellent translation. I’ve been reading the Milton of the sonnets. Virgil and Catullus. Sappho. Ezra Pound’s “Cathay.” Robert Frost and Apollinaire. And, of course, the collected Freud.
What prompted you to write a poem about Nick Cave?
I think that he is a marvelous artist and a wonderful man. I am fond of him personally and admire his work. I was at his last concert at the Beacon Theater in New York, which was remarkable, as all of his performances are. I then saw a video of him in the bar at Claridge’s in London, giving an impromptu performance for the startled, clearly very moved people there who had not expected to hear Nick Cave, but were treated to this. He’s a wonderful singer and the material that he uses for the songs is powerfully moving, involving his own personal losses and drama. I couldn’t be more admiring.
What’s been your biggest book-related splurge?
It’s not my sort of thing really. Many years ago I purchased the O.E.D. No comment on the book itself. I just bought for myself Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands.” It’s a big book of ghastly bloodshed.
Whom would you want to write your life story?
Samuel Johnson comes to mind. Or Suetonius.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
I’m not given to dinner parties. I find them suffocating. Insufficient oxygen.
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