Ooga-booga
The 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry went to Frederick Seidel's Ooga-Booga.
Work Information
A sharp, often darkly playful collection of poems.
The Los Angeles Times recognized the collection in Poetry. Seidel's poems are known for their forceful voice and social observation.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Published
- 2006-11-14
- Pages
- 101 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.94 x 1.63 x 21.89 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780374226558
- ISBN-10
- 0374226555
- Price
- 10850 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
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 ).
Frederick Seidel s previous books of poems include The Cosmos Trilogy ; Final Solutions ; Sunrise, These Days ; and Poems, 19591979. He received the 2002 PEN/Voelker Award for Poetry. Frederick Seidel 's previous books of poems include The Cosmos Trilogy ; Final Solutions ; Sunrise, These Days ; and Poems, 1959-1979. He received the 2002 PEN/Voelker Award for Poetry.
Reviews
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a very interest poetry book
Amazing. Very interesting, with many different tools and techniques and topics used. Fascinating to read - I drunk it in in one sitting, and will be reading many times over. Not always pleasant reading, but always fascinating!
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Just stupendous
I'd been unsuccessful in finding a poet who inhabited my insane urban world; many carried the musty odor of academe, and/or lived in rural areas fomenting images of cows and trees, or in any case couldn't re-invent language to be sufficiently intense, or graphic, or vivid to address our existence. Ashbury and Muldoon were too difficult. Strand was too bland. Greger was only occasionally powerful. Komunyakaa came close but could never quite close the sale. Then I happened on a review of "Ooga-Booga." And bought it. Bingo! Why are there only two reviews here? Are Americans so indifferent to poetry, or so sentimentalized as not to recognize the real thing when it slaps them in the face? I'm unsure exactly where Seidel should be placed in the pantheon: whether he has the gravitas of Yeats or the formal dazzle of ee cummings; perhaps he's just a bit shy of greatness, a la Auden. But whether these poems become classics or whether their big punch will fizzle some with age, they certainly are knockouts now. (Either "The Bush Administration" or "Barbados" would alone have been worth the price of admission) Seidel is the poet for our times: caustic wit, a twistiness of metaphor that can leave you gasping, irreverence, playfulness, a refusal to be bound by the pompous mantle of Literature, a complex understanding of relations between our inner and outer worlds, and--not least--a sense of moral outrage. "The Cosmos Trilogy" is great too. Mr. Seidel: stay healthy, keep writing! God knows you're a rare beast.
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Got what I paid for.
I bought it because it said “Ooga-Booga” and it did in fact say Ooga-Booga. Money well spent.
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The Truman Capote of poetry...
Brilliant, scatological, sexy, far-reaching, deep. This man is the Truman Capote of poetry - I absolutely loved this book...
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um
have you ever seen someone turn their back on something you love and do it better than you ever could?