Hugh Seidman

I have always admired Seidman's work for the purity of its language and the clarity of its music. But even the loveliness of his earlier poems scarcely prepared me for the dreadful power of his new book. He is one of a precious handful of undeniable fine new poets in America.
--James Wright

This poetry is of concern to us all, I believe, because it is struggling to create an alternative masculine sensibility. It is a poetry of difficult power, language breaking through "the throat, sore, clamped on the scream," but often with astonishing beauty.
--Adrienne Rich

The voice in Hugh Seidman's poetry speaks with a delicate, troubling, growing urgency, of what is integral both to him and to the world we share with him. ...The best of them arouse at once the feeling that they were sayings we needed.
--W.S. Merwin

Hugh Seidman has become a major American voice.
--The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

THE BRACELET

The bracelet of sixteen stones put by you
at the pulse of my wrist in color the earth has
     worked
is a puzzle to myself who have always
mistrusted adornment and color and have
     dressed
in the coldness of the sky and sea
for I have bought shirts and scarfs of
lavenders and yellows and a pair of salmon
     corduroys
with red and brown shoes and have placed
a gold rug in my bathroom and a larger rug
of deep and brilliant reds at the floor beneath
three windows where the north light comes
to a white and yellow plastic table and these
     things
are a wonder to me as are you who have
     brought this upon me
like an amazing reimbursement of the spring

--From BLOOD LORD

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BLOOD LORD was originally published by Doubleday.

It is now available through WWW.BACKINPRINT.COM.

To order, click the "Quick Link" in the next column.