Poet Seidel relates his inspired life
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP NEW YORK
It is late morning,By HILLEL ITALIE, AP NEW YORK
The poet is 71. He loves Fred Astaire.
"I want it all to matter," he says, "whether it gets down on the page or not."
Using an expletive ("It is"), the writer establishes the setting ("late morning," "Carlyle's Gallery"), then the time by touchstones (references to the Twin Towers, poet, Ezra Pound, etc.), which seem arbitrary; but that's the point, as the first quote shows: "I want it all to matter." Already the writer has a point-of-view about his subject as an odd person. Then he establishes a background of the writer for those unfamilair with him (the second sentence goes to lower levels of generality, from poems to kinds of poems):
For more than 50 years, Seidel has been writing poems — topical poems and timeless poems. Poems about sex, the cosmos, motorcycles and growing old. Difficult, troubling poems that may or may not have rhyme or meter, or may or may not have an obvious meaning, but still leave brave readers feeling the presence of a strange and brilliant mind.
Good descriptive prose about the subject's appearance:
Wearing a jacket and slacks, no tie, Seidel is a casual, cultured man with a high forehead and a spark of scandal in his eyes. He almost never talks to the press, but agreed to an Associated Press interview in support of "Ooga-Booga," his most recent collection. The Carlyle, across town from his Upper West Side apartment, is a favorite locale, honored in his poem, "Frederick Seidel," in which he declares: "I am a result of the concierge of the Carlyle."
The dialogue takes us to a lower level of generality from the previous mention of the Carlyle Hotel:
"I like being alone, and I like hotels," he says, noting that hotels often are in his poems. "I like the sense of being safely enclosed, anonymous, but not — able to feel cosseted and comforted and protected by what's around, but left alone by it. That's what I think is terrific about hotels. You're alone, but you're not."
"Writes" refers back to a previous paragraph about the poet's writing, also taking us to lower levels of generality, but this time using indirect dialogue for variety and economy (saving words). "Even" takes us to lower levels of generality, further describing the poet's indifference:
He writes day and night, he says, and appears not to worry about who reads him. A recent nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, he didn't attend the ceremony and didn't bother writing a statement in case he won (he didn't). Even his new book's cover, a mocking, menacing head shot of Seidel taken in a photo booth, has an "open, if you dare," quality.
The writer now uses contrast as antithesis to the poet's indifference (what would he do if Oprah Winfrey came calling). This is followed by an analogy ("like being paid," etc.). The paragrah concludes on "definition," a commonplace putting the poet as a "type of artist" Winfrey might admire:
Asked what his reaction would be if Oprah Winfrey came calling, Seidel dismisses the idea, then briefly welcomes it, if only for the weirdness, like being paid to write a poem while bungee jumping. But in a way Seidel might appreciate, he's the type of artist Winfrey would probably admire, for his poems are a triumph of cosmic awe in the face of earthly terror.
After describing the poet's work in the last paragraph, the writer gets to lower levels of generality in the next:
The news is often bad in his work, whether the crash of the World Trade Center or the failings of his own body ("The melanoma on my skin/Resumes what's wrong with me within"). The same man who spells suicidal "sui-Seidel"), remains wondrous, fascinated, grateful to be alive, much in love with "the sky above."
The quote takes us to lower levels of generality from the last paragraph:
"I'm quite taken up with what's going on now, when it's going on. I like the times I'm living in. In fact, it's been a privilege, a fascination, to be living through these decades," he says.
Now we get the usual biographical background to vary the present with the past and give the reader some perspective on the profile subject:
A native of St. Louis, Seidel has been a dedicated writer since age 13, when poetry cast its spell. The author was seated in a school library, reading Time magazine instead of doing his homework, when he spotted an article about Ezra Pound and read an excerpt from one of his cantos, "What thou lovest well remains/the rest is dross."
In profiles, quotes usually go to lower levels of generality from the previous, more general, descriptive prose, as here:
"It was just a wand, a Disney wand with sparkles, touching me, sparkles almost piercing — the almost unbearable beauty of those lines, which are as beautiful now, some years later, as they were then," he says.
Definition advances the profile by putting Seidel in the class of other modernist poets like Eliot and Pound. Definition is also used to list the "lot of people" the poet met, which takes us to a lower level of generality:
A young modernist was born, who would well carry on the tradition of classical learning and contemporary dread. Seidel not only read Pound and T.S. Eliot, but got to know them. He's met a lot of people: from fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg to John F. Kennedy, who visited the Harvard University campus while Seidel was a student and Kennedy a senator.
More Definition is used ("a wealthy man's son") and a comic analogy ("as [=like] an agent of fate"):
Fitting for a wealthy man's son — his father ran a coal-and-coke business — Seidel did not really ask to see his heroes, but insisted on it, presented himself as an agent of fate. He remembers first contacting Pound in the 1950s, when Seidel was an undergraduate and Pound was institutionalized at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Months later, an airmail special delivery postcard arrived from St. Elizabeth's, with "an illegible scrawl on it." Upon close inspection, Seidel realized he had received an invitation.
Lower levels of generality, typical of quoted speech in profiles:
"I took a Greyhound bus from Cambridge, Mass., to Washington and saw Pound. I planned to stay a couple of days and stayed more and more," he recalls.
With Pound's help, Seidel met Eliot, when the poet was living in London and working as a publisher at Faber & Faber. Seidel never doubted they would get along. Both were poets, from St. Louis, friends of Ezra Pound. A meeting was arranged at Eliot's office, where Seidel encountered his secretary, Valerie Fletcher, who would soon become Eliot's wife.
Again the quoted speech moves to lower levels of generality from the previous narrated paragrah:
"When I arrived, 17-18 years old, she said to me, in a very shocked way, and an unfriendly way, `You shouldn't be here at all. He shouldn't be seeing you at all. He's quite sick, so for heaven's sake, don't stay long.'"
Good use of short paragraphs. The writer also uses "epistrophe" (repeating the last word in a sentence: "long") in order to insure coherence. "Hours" takes "long" to a lower level of generality, also advancing coherence:
He stayed long.
"Hours," he says. "We had a wonderful time."
Some more background information. Profiles usually are ordered from present to past and forward again to add variety to the writing. Note that the book title, Final Solutions, is set off by quotes ("Final Solutions") instead of italics. This is common in popular print forms like newspapers, etc. But the accepted form in book style is italics. Now the writer uses Cause-Effect to develop the narration. A parenthesis is also nicely used to describe how Seidel enjoys "Scandal!"
Seidel caused a bit of controversy — "Scandal!" he calls it, eyes alive with pleasure — even before his first book, "Final Solutions," came out. In 1962, he was to receive a poetry award from the 92nd Street Y in New York City, but was told to remove some references to former first lady Mamie Eisenhower, for fear of libel.
"Request" links this paragraph to the last by a lower level of generality:
The request was denied, the award revoked. Atheneum Books had promised to publish his book, changed its mind and "Final Solutions" was eventually released by Random House. Seidel waited 17 years before putting out another.
Again, quoted speech moves to a lower level of generality from the last narration:
"I wrote a bit after that, but then I stopped, because I felt I did not know how to say something new, and that it would be important to wait until I did," he says.
The next paragraph might have begun with more obvious coherence in the form, "He resists interviews to conserve his creative life," etc. Instead the writer chose reversed word order to add interest ("One reason"):
One reason he resists interviews is not just protection of his private life, but the conservation of his creative life, as if every word released were so much energy burned. Poetry, he explains, is a state of mind apart from the poet, yet also above the poet, below the poet, and deeply within.
On a lower level of generality, this quote explains the previous narration at a lower level of generality:
"You're doing so many things on so many tracks at the same time — dozens and dozens of things, mentally — that were you successfully to separate out the different strands, you would make the task impossible," says Seidel, now the author of 11 books, including "Sunrise," winner of National Book Critics Circle Prize in 1981, and "Going Fast," a finalist in 1999 for the Pulitzer.
Some more epistrophe ("own world," "the world"). Then speech goes to a lower level of generality ("A boulevard of elegance").
He is in his own world, but very much of the world. "A boulevard of elegance," as he has written of himself, he is mad about movies and music and a connoisseur of politics, as pastime and metaphysics. He is one poet for whom presidents matter, not only as lawmakers, but as cultural forces, whose personal essence becomes public matter.
Again speech goes to a lower level of generality from previous narration. The final paragraphs go to progressively lower levels of generality, insuring coherence. The profile ends on a quote, using Definition (of Robert Kennedy) as a Definition of the poet himself (that is, they belong in the same class):
"I'm very much aware of politics, because I very much enjoy politics," he says. "There have been a few blank periods when I was deprived of my pleasure. . . . But, for the most part, it's very much a part of what I see as coloring the world, permeating the world."
He has written an ode to the Kennedy administration ("We could love politics for its mind!/All seemed possible") and an anti-ode to the Bush administration ("The United States of America preemptively eats the world"). Other presidents have bored him (Ronald Reagan) or fascinated him, but not to the point of poetry (Richard Nixon).
One man truly moved him. Seidel has likened Robert Kennedy, assassinated in 1968 as he ran for president, to a character out of Yeats and has written that Kennedy was the only politician he ever loved. When discussing Kennedy during his interview, Seidel sounds as if he could be describing himself.
"He had a fierce sincerity, he meant it. He was almost scary, and was quite willing to say the wrong thing," Seidel says. "He tried to fight his way forward to where he got, and where he got, I thought, was admirable, inspired and inspiring."
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