Going Fast

“I like motorcycles, the city, the telephone.
TV but not to watch, just to turn it on.
The women and their legs, the movies and the streets.
At dawn when it’s so hot the sky is almost red.
The smell of both the rivers is the underworld exhumed.”
–from “At Gracie Mansion”

Frederick Seidel’s sound and power, his heat and beautiful coldness, are unique and instantly recognizable. The poems in Going Fast, his sixth collection, are set in New York, London, Paris, Milan, Bologna, and Tahiti.