Hugh Seidman — Poet

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Hugh Seidman has published seven poetry books, including Somebody Stand Up and Sing, which won the Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press; Collecting Evidence, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize; and People Live, They Have Lives, which was judged the winner of the Camden Poetry Award. He has also won three New York State poetry grants; three NEA fellowships; and his Selected Poems: 1965-1995 was named one of the Village Voice’s “25 Favorite Books of 1995.” Seidman’s latest book, Status of the Mourned, was published by Dispatches Editions, an imprint of Spuyten Duyvil Press. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Yale University, the City College of New York, the College of William and Mary, the New School, and other institutions.

PARADISIACAL PARK FAR FROM WAR

Tree-blocked light, small blue verbena flowers.
Banana plant’s broad, ribbed, yellowish leaves.

Old woman in black on a bench, with pearls and red beret.
But where was her slumped husband sketching in black beret?

Shopping cart like the metal wheeler given a neighbor.
(Fallen in the street, afraid to go out.)

Labor-Day-weekend-Sunday paradisiacal park far from war.
(Absent Twin-Tower abutters of obdurate, cloudless blue.)

•

Saw her again today—red cockade, black beret.
End-of-lifer at stubborn wind, footprinted snow, umbrellaed rain.

As many stride the sidewalk past this natural fraction.
Edging the environing iron of its habitués. 

Near the sky-high-rent, world-wide-tourist center of the universe.
(Pre-fashionista, meat-packers’ blood-acrid pavements.) 

Outpoured, exuberant paradisiacal park far from war.
Burgeoned, last-of-April tulips—red, white, yellow, orange.

© 2018 Hugh Seidman

From Status of the Mourned, published by Spuyten Duyvil:
http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/status-of-the-mourned.html

For more poems from Hugh Seidman, go to
http://www.hughseidman.com/