My Tokyo.(Brief Article)

In his fifth book, Seidel (Final Solutions) presents a moral landscape balanced delicately between history and the self: "I listen to the music / Nine years before 2000," he notes in "Stroke." The poet writes to locate himself and his readers in a world where "Stalin isn't a psychosomatic disorder," and where "The homeless homeless have / The center strip of Broadway. / To live where you should jump." His best poems have a taut and unusual richness. In "The Death of Meta Burden in an Avalanche," Seidel draws on many sources for his images; they mirror his lines in the poem: "Everything / Fits my body perfectly now that I'm about to disappear." In "Untitled" the …