The new Paris Review has a long interview with poet Frederick Seidel by FSG president Jonathan Galassi; a small excerpt is online. (This is a much better match-up than the hideous choice of Katie Roiphe to interview Gay Talese in the last issue!) I love Seidel, despite that I usually reflexively (and properly) dislike many born-rich artists. And, you know, the Harvard set. Among other great moments of the interview, Seidel reveals the contents of a letter from Ezra Pound, regarding the incoming president of Harvard (that would be Nathan Pusey, in 1953, who was then rather liberal but whose liberal views were outpaced, let's say, by the changing country). This letter from Pound said: "Only you can save Harvard from that kikesucking Pusey," which, wow. But let us turn to the part where Seidel discusses Issues with Ladies.
INTERVIEWER
One of the most quotable–and quoted–lines in your recent poetry is this: "A naked woman my age is just a total nightmare." Women, love, sex, the battle of the sexes–all are major material in your work. Why is this?
SEIDEL
Women are objects, sexual and otherwise, which the poem shapes to fit the poem. I look but I find no battle between the sexes, just a bit of a struggle to see who gets to do what. Women both lead and follow.
INTERVIEWER
Women in your poetry run the gamut from idealization to enmity.
SEDIEL
I don't think it's true. Where's the enmity? As for idealization, I hope there is a considerable amount of celebrating and enjoying women, saluting them and looking up to them. Yes, the poems sometimes have a kind of ferociousness, a willingness to say things that can be considered awful things to say. But the truth is, when I wrote the line "A naked woman my age is just a total nightmare," my first thought was, It's a wonderful line.
INTERVIEWER
It is. But people take it personally, and are offended.
SEIDEL
I can't help that. It isn't meant to offend. It's mean to be part of a poem, and I would like to point out that the line is used, with certain differences, in two poems, both of which describe the difficulties that old age brings to women and men. One of the poems ends with a white-haired old man incapacitated in bed and an old woman who is about to mop up his slop on the floor. The poem isn't about which is more fortunate than the other.
This is confusing-but at least in part, I think, because he's not using the commonplace language that the kids today use (and have used, since the 70s) to discuss sexism? And I think when he says that women are objects, he does mean that everything is an object to him in writing, even though that sounds worse. But it's also queer and haughty to disclaim the reactions and interpretations of reading. It sounds like nothing so much as some 20-something blogger, being all "I can't help that you think I sound bitchy and mean!" If you write things because they sound great, which of course we all do, well, people will interpret those words as having meaning. Crazy.
Cynthia would have had him stuffed into the Cloaca Maxima.
Yeah but Cynthia wasn't really a woman, she was an allegory for a book about herself, she being a woman who wasn't really a woman but an allegory about a book about, etc., and how's that for objectification?
There likely was a real Cynthia. And - I'm guessing - she would have been really bored with/by Seidel.
I'm with you halfway!
Commenting on this post b/c I can't comment on the previous one. LET US COMMENT ON THE SPONSORED POSTS! What, your advertisers can't handle snark?
You can buy one too! Omg, I want to buy a sponsored post now. I'm going to ask Cho how much.
I'm saving my money to buy an LRB personal ad. Sorry.
Those are 80 pence a letter or something! It's crazy.
actually, i kind of want to see that movie now.
" 'Sins' are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be 'sinning.' "
I suppose this cuts two ways, but it occurs to me lately whenever someone demands to dredge some artist's kitchen sink for dirty dishes.
To me (admittedly an Old) this sounds to me like he's saying, "I did my best to write what I was thinking, and some people got it and others didn't.
There are always going to be some people (you always hope it's relatively few) who are coming to come to your writing with so preconceived and wooden an attitude that just about whatever you say they're going to find something in it offensive. But if they're not your intended audience, that's not such a huge problem. Now, if it starts to look like just about everyone reading what you wrote is taking it the wrong way, then you're a lousy writer and you need to clean up your act.
And what's wrong with being queer? Especially if you get to dress it up with haughtiness?
Yeah, I get pretty weary of people reacting to art words as if they necessarily advocate a particular position, rather than simply showcase an idea. "A naked woman my age is just a total nightmare" is, yes, a terrible thing to say to a woman that age; but it's also something that has undoubtedly occurred to plenty of people, men and women alike, and it is the opposite of art's job to shy away from saying it just because it bugs some people.
It bugs me because it is banal.
But FSG publish Seidel, so Galassi would naturally agree that it is wonderful.
Well, yeah, the quality is debatable. But whether or not it takes a quote-unquote acceptable stance shouldn't be.
Choire, he stole your avatar face.
Christ, yes! "Haughty's spotted something queer at 11 O'Clock".
Oh man, am I the only one who likes the Rophie?
Yes.
I'm not familiar with her work, and I dislike Talese's, but that was an entertaining interview.
I like to call her the Forget-Me-Noiw.
YUP.
How many varieties of :"yup" can we do? Here's mine: I should certainly hope so.
He is a hoot.
Reading Seidel's poems I generally get the impression of someone wandering in a museum when all the lights are off, and the display cases are filled with the bodies of people he used to know.
A hoot, I say.
I don't know anything about this guy, but "A naked woman my age is just a total nightmare" is not, in fact, a great line. Unless you're writing a "Will and Grace" spec script.