Area Code 212 is the journey's end in ice and flames of Seidel's brilliant Cosmos Poems trilogy. Reversing the order and outlook of Dante's Divine Comedy, Seidel's three-book series begins in the heavens (with The Cosmos Poems) and then descends steeply--through the Purgatory of Life on Earth, the second volume--to at last arrive at home, in Manhattan, with its famous area code.

Area Code 212: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Seidel, Frederick

Poetry

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

These are the collected poems of a master whose work includes many of the most compelling, savage, and tender poems in the language. Frederick Seidel is, in the words of the critic Adam Kirsch, “the best American poet writing today.”

Poems 1959-2009

New poems from the author of Going Fast, with original illustrations by Anselm Kiefer. A can of shaving cream inflates A ping-pong ball of lather, Thick, hot, smaller than an atom, soon The size of the world. This does take time to happen. Back at the start Again, a pinprick swells so violently It shoots out Hallways to other worlds, But keeps expanding Till it is all There is. The universe is all there is. --from "Mirror Full of Stars" The Cosmos Poems were commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History to inaugurate and celebrate their new planetarium, which will open in the year 2000. This limited edition is signed by the author.

The Cosmos Poems

Kiefer, Anselm

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Going Fast: Poems

Frederick Seidel's sound and power, his heat and beautiful coldness, are unique and instantly recognizable. The poems in Going Fast, his sixth collection, are set in New York, London, Paris, Milan, Bologna, and Tahiti.

The second book of an extravagant work-in-progress
What's Joel Got to do but let the jewel Hatch The light and hook
It to the flesh It will outlast And point the staring woman At a mirror? --from "The Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal"
Dante's Divine Comedy begins with a journey through Hell and ends in Heaven. Frederick Seidel's trilogy The Cosmos Poems begins in the heavens and descends. 
Life on Earth is the second book in this trilogy. It includes natural and human history, which are the history of the self, and biography, which is the history of everything else, told in vignettes of beauty, sublimity, horror, and regret.

Life on Earth: Poems (The Cosmos Trilogy, 2)

My Tokyo, Frederick Seidel's fourth collection, brings together twenty-seven new poems by one of our most arresting writers. In Seidel's work, a passionate, uncompromising sensibility confronts the intractable reality of a turbulent world, a world of seductive glamour, harsh splendor, and cruelty. The strong rhetoric of the poems juxtaposes intense lyricism with a remorseless, cold-eyed skepticism. The results are consistently challenging, disturbing, and fiercely beautiful. Robert Lowell once wrote about this remarkable poet: "When I read him, I have envious, delighted, jolted feelings, and suspect the possibilities of modern poetry have been changed. Here is power that strikes."

My Tokyo: Poems

A stunning new collection from the "beguiling and magisterial" poet (The New York Times Book Review) 
"Something is going on. Something is wrong."
Frederick Seidel―the "ghoul" (Chicago Review), the "triumphant outsider" (Contemporary Poetry Review)―returns with a dangerous new collection of poems. Nice Weather presents the sexual and political themes that have long preoccupied Seidel―and thrilled and offended his readers. Lyrical, grotesque, elegiac, this book adds new music and menace to his masterful body of work.

Nice Weather: Poems

Ooga-Booga: Poems

From the winner of the PEN/Voelker Award, poems of love, terror, rage, and desire. Here I am, not a practical man, But clear-eyed in my contact lenses, Following no doubt a slightly different line than the others, Seeking sexual pleasure above all else, Despairing of art and of life, Seeking protection from death by seeking it On a racebike, finding release and belief on two wheels . . . --from "The Death of the Shah" The poems in Ooga-Booga are about a youthful slave owner and his aging slave, and both are the same man. This is the tenderest, most savage collection yet from "the most frightening American poet ever" (Calvin Bedient, Boston Review).

A stunning new collection from a “beguiling and magisterial” poet (The New York Times Book Review) This is the End of Days. This is what we’ve been waiting for always. I walked over to the Hudson River, heading for Mars. Each poem of mine is a suicide belt. I say that to my girlfriend Life. Peaches Goes It Alone, Frederick Seidel’s newest collection of poems, begins with global warming and ends with Aphrodite. In between is everything. Peaches Goes It Alone presents the sexual and political themes that have long preoccupied Seidel―and thrilled and offended his readers. Lyrical, grotesque, and elegiac, Peaches Goes It Alone adds new music and menace to Seidel’s masterful body of work.

Peaches Goes It Alone: Poems

“One of the world’s most inspired and unusual poets . . . [Seidel’s] poems are a triumph of cosmic awe in the face of earthly terror.” ―Hillel Italie, USA Today
Frederick Seidel has been called many things. A “transgressive adventurer,” “a demonic gentleman,” a “triumphant outsider,” “a great poet of innocence,” and “an example of the dangerous Male of the Species,” just to name a few. Whatever you choose to call him, one thing is certain: “he radiates heat” (The New Yorker).
 Now add to that: the poet of aging and decrepitude.
 Widening Income Inequality, Seidel’s new poetry collection, is a rhymed magnificence of sexual, historical, and cultural exuberance, a sweet and bitter fever of Robespierre and Obamacare and Apollinaire, of John F. Kennedy and jihadi terror and New York City and Italian motorcycles. Rarely has poetry been this true, this dapper, or this dire. Seidel is “the most poetic of the poets and their leader into hell.”

Widening Income Inequality: Poems

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