Evening Man: Frederick Seidel

Adam Kirsch said it best when he wrote that, “Fred Seidel’s favorite subject is Fred Seidel.” The title poem in Seidel’s most recent collection, Evening Man (2008) is no different, and begins with the stanza:

The man in bed with me this morning is myself, is me
The sort of same-sex marriage New York State allows.
Both men believe in infidelity.
Both wish they could annul their marriage vows.

A set form (quatrains) with this sort of in-your-face, fairly cheesy rhyming is signature Fred Seidel. Taken by itself, a stanza like this has a certain amount of charm. The speaker clearly has some ironic distance from his own life, and is able to turn an observation about the self into a universal generality—a move in lyric poetry readers typically appreciate. And what’s more, Seidel seems to be making a rare politically correct statement, with only a touch of the usual taboo he can’t seem to resist writing about. Fred Seidel is poking fun at New York for not legalizing gay marriage—this, we can all have a good snicker about—but he is also implying marriage makes people miserable! Fred Seidel, master of contradictions!

The problem is that here, as in other places, Seidel is only using peripheral issues as a means of writing about himself. Everything else comes at that expense, including lyric intensity. The strongest line in this poem immediately follows this stanza, and it really isn’t all that interesting: “This afternoon I will become the Evening Man.” There’s some mystery in the line. What, as a poet of exactness, does Seidel mean by his deviation into a vagary such as Evening Man? Is it a nod to his aging? Has some Donald Justice slipped into the infamous Seidel aesthetic? Perhaps, but according to Seidel in a recent interview in the Paris Review, Seidel explained that he meant dressing up in evening wear, and getting ready to go out on the town. I would rather be left guessing.

But this is a problem that stretches beyond “Evening Man.” Very few of Seidel’s lines are striking at all. What one notices in regards to his technical aesthetic is the plainness of Seidel’s verse, and the way syntax is contorted in order to accommodate obvious end rhymes. There’s little lyric pay off for these convolutions, but this often excused flaw is noticed after the fact, because what Seidel has made a career out of is violating taboos, usually involving religion, race, or women—a recurring fantasy of Seidel’s is a powerful woman with big breasts. By writing about his fantasies in a jocular tone, with juvenile end rhymes, Seidel's readership feels as though they are on the inside of some clever joke. But the joke has been on the poetry community—when Seidel writes about the pleasure of money and expensive tailors, when he writes about women as objects—he’s writing exactly what he means.. When Seidel writes lines such as this, from “A Song for Cole Porter”:

I for years was unable to decide,
Tits or ass? And don’t forget legs.
Which one do you think is the best?
My choice would vary. Who would you choose?
It was all too good to be true. Then came you!

Everyone’s a sexual object.
Everyone is something to use.
Everyone is something good.
I’m her vibrator—but believe me,
Everyone is something unphysical also.

I’m so cool—I’m so hot!
I make her oink when we fuck.

he’s not writing from the voice of some culturally warped, chauvinistic, entitled old man who thinks he’s being charming, or honest—he’s writing exactly what he thinks. There’s no tongue-in-cheek, no redemptive satire or irony. The fact that Seidel recognizes this debasement and writes about it honestly (happily) is of little value.

Even Seidel’s attempts at sentiment fall short. In the poem “Boys”, a slightly atypical descent into nostalgia, Seidel writes:

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.

A poem like this does put the title Evening Man (despite what Seidel says) in a slightly different light, and because it’s the first poem of the book it's clear that Seidel wants the idea of reflection in the forefront—Seidel is now past seventy, and it seems age is softening his subject matter. The problem is, I don’t believe there was a time when Seidel didn’t notice the people working for his father were black. And I think remembering them for their white teeth (“big with good,” no less!) is, at best, unoriginal. The two end lines are jarring, to no poetic effect other than a loyalty to form. A stanza such as this is not the work of a master, which is what Seidel is credited as being, but rather the work of a man writing mostly for himself, who has managed to survive by violating the taboo, by over a half-century of relentless dedication to form and style, and by recording the shallowness and decadence of a culture—the problem is that Seidel never dares to transcend it, either in technical mastery or in spirit, and he doesn’t care to.