So What

A bristling, invigorating new collection from the eminent American poet

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 the 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.