rederick Seidel has been called “the poet the twentieth century
deserved” and lauded as one of “the best poets writing today”;
he has also been accused of writing “sinister” and “disturbing”
poetry. Ange Mlinko, in the Nation, described his work as employing
“the prosody of atrocity.” Such divisive reactions have followed
Seidel from the beginning: his first book, Final Solutions (1963), was
chosen by Robert Lowell, Louise Bogan, and Stanley Kunitz for a
prize offered by the 92nd Street Y. Publication was delayed, however,
when the manuscript was rejected by the committee and publisher for
what they believed was its anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and libelous
tone. Lowell, Bogan, and Kunitz resigned from the board in protest,
and the New York Times covered the s