Ooga-Booga
Frederick Seidel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)
Long Island-based motorcycle enthusiast and poet Frederick Seidel features a photobooth self-portrait, complete with developer stain on the bottom of the image, as the cover of this, his most recent collection of poems. As a Publisher's Weekly review on the book's Amazon.com page reads,
Seidel's 14th book finds his caustic vigor undiminished, his high-volume confidence as entertaining—or disturbing—as ever: gleeful antiwar protests and self-mocking, obvious rhymes zip easily among a bombed Baghdad, a deluxe version of Paris and a hyperbolically glitzy jetset New York.
In an Associated Press story about Seidel, the portrait is described this way:
Even his new book's cover, a mocking, menacing head shot of Seidel taken in a photo booth, has an "open, if you dare," quality.
The photograph of Seidel used in the AP story shows him sitting at his desk, with a series of photostrips framed on the wall behind him, one of which is featured on the cover of his book.
Contributed by Brian
