People Live, They Have Lives: Poems (The Miami University Poetry Series)

Hugh Seidman's first book of poetry, Collecting Evidence, was chosen by Stanley Kunitz for the 1970 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. In People Live, They Have Lives, Seidman continues his unflinching exploration of the human condition while avoiding the discursive trappings of much contemporary poetry. The precise use of language in the poem "Mouse" underscores his talent and skill: "Delicate elephant ears./ Pointed fox snout./ Chicken feet that scratched/ where the stove cable goes from his world to this one." Many of his poems are tender and austere explorations of age and of the relationship between a son and his parents: "What does a mother dream in a Brooklyn nursing home?/ Days measured by the Atlantic./ Each day like each day." (from "The Senile") and "What will a father will? Nothing but a son./ A face beside itself in the bedside shaving mirror." (from "Hospital"). The full range of Hugh Seidman's work may be sampled in Selected Poems: 1965-1995.