So What

Frederick Seidel declares ‘I’m not as old as I used to be. I’m getting young.’ In ‘So What’, he speeds across the island of Manhattan on his racetrack – only Superbike, hurtling into the tenth decade of his life and sixth decade of his extraordinary career. But the path from youth to old age has not been straightforward. With a disarming combination of acuity and playfulness, the poet confronts his vulnerability while using his artfulness as a form of subversion. Rather than contemplating a return to childlike innocence, he writes, ‘I explode with rage and age’. In doing so, he summons up a tidal surge full of shotguns and wristwatches, late-blooming love and sex, and stark glimpses of American life. At its crest stands the poet, looking over all this wreckage and creation, and he proclaims: so what.