RaveNew York MagazineThe poems in Ooga-Booga are the richest yet and read like no one else’s: They’re surreal without being especially difficult, and utterly unpretentious, suffused with the peculiar American loneliness of Raymond Chandler. Even when writing about sex, Seidel sounds incurably alone. And the charges of elitism and starfucking fall apart as soon as one actually reads the poems—a lunchtime glass of Haut-Brion at Montrachet becomes a self-dissection, and Seidel is toughest on himself ... While I can think of a more likable book of poems, I can scarcely imagine a better one.
Anthony Marra
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewBut these missteps barely register in the wake of a book this ambitious and fearless, one that offers so much to enjoy and admire. At a time when a lot of fiction by young American writers veers toward familiar settings and safe formal choices, Marra’s far-ranging, risky and explicitly political book marks him as a writer with an original, even singular sensibility.
