Click Here to Purchase and Read About: Available now from IPBooks: Spaldeen: Poems by Henry M. Seiden.
About the author:
Henry M. Seiden is a poet and a psychologist and psychoanalyst who practices in Forest Hills, New York. His most recent book is The Motive for Metaphor: brief essays on poetry and psychoanalysis (Karnac).
Praise for Spaldeen
In Henry Seiden’s Spaldeen with its deliciously homely title, humor (witty and sometimes even groan-worthy), heartache, exhilaration, and generous insights take their turns and have their way with this reader. These are large-hearted poems, loving their jokes, their remembered games, their Jewish family characters. Contemplative, insightful, and lyrical, they deliver what Seiden calls “the ache of absence.” Here is a poet, not only a master of his craft, but of expansive expressive kindness, a joy to read.
~Gail Mazur, author of Forbidden City
Even if you didn’t grow up in New York City you’ll feel as if you did after reading Henry Seiden’s evocations of his Bronx boyhood. “New memories of old things – if such a thing is possible.” This diverse collection also includes lovely metaphorical lyrics, a group of poems about Hopper paintings and threads of dark humor. “My achievements speak for themselves, but in a hoarse stage whisper,” he tells us in “Certain Death.” Henry Seiden’s very much alive persona even manages a valedictory any one of us might be proud to utter: “I thank them,” he says in Acceptance Speech,” even for my bad dreams, even for the dreams I may never understand.”
~Irene Willis, author of Reminder
“…I am delighted by what Seiden does. I am delighted by the intelligence, the honesty, the knowledge, and the power of his presence. It is a moral presence, and moral most of all because of his good music, his good writing. I congratulate him.”
~Gerald Stern, recipient of the National Book Award for poetry for This Time: New and Selected Poems and first Poet Laureate of New Jersey.