My Tokyo Poems

My Tokyo, Frederick Seidel's fourth collection, brings together twenty-seven new poems by one of our most arresting writers. In Seidel's work, a passionate, uncompromising sensibility confronts the intractable reality of a turbulent world, a world of seductive glamour, harsh splendor, and cruelty. The strong rhetoric of the poems juxtaposes intense lyricism with a remorseless, cold-eyed skepticism. The results are consistently challenging, disturbing, and fiercely beautiful. Robert Lowell once wrote about this remarkable poet: "When I read him, I have envious, delighted, jolted feelings, and suspect the possibilities of modern poetry have been changed. Here is power that strikes".