Peaches Goes It Alone

Ever-divisive octogenarian Seidel (Widening Income Inequality) continues to move through the world with the ease of a man of privilege who has been blessed with an enthusiastic mind, all of which is brightly reflected in his latest collection. Seidel has been criticized for the way he depicts women in his work, an accusation he sidesteps with such lines as “Ninety percent of a man like me is mouth,/ Exhorting on the page.” Yet he can’t help but observe with an off-rhyme, “The girl with the face/ As charming as her voice/ Has a beautiful ass/ Filling out her tan pants.” Seidel often references current events; here colorfully describing the Trump administration as “a dictatorship of vicious spineless slimes” and Trump’s infamous New York residence as “a tower of global-warming gold.” The poems flit from the City of Light to Amsterdam’s red light district, and off to “Barbados, Ghana, the Hôtel Raphael, the Hôtel Lenox,/ Les Gourcuff, snowy Sag Harbor.” But the collection’s leading role remains New York City, a place that accompanies Seidel even as he grapples with mortality: “My God, what a beautiful New York day!/ If only getting old would go away!” Throughout, Seidel shows that as one ages, “One goes on living and wonderful things/ Go on going wrong.” (Nov.)