{"id":67935,"date":"2014-03-11T17:27:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T21:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=67935"},"modified":"2014-03-11T17:27:51","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T21:27:51","slug":"dayley-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/11\/dayley-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayley Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

On April 8th,<\/sup> at our Spring Revel<\/a>, we\u2019ll honor Frederick Seidel with the Hadada Award. In the weeks leading up the Revel, we\u2019re looking back at the work Seidel has published in <\/i>The Paris Review throughout his career.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"KONICA<\/a>

Photo: Christoph Michels<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cDayley Island<\/a>\u201d is the first poem Frederick Seidel published in The Paris Review<\/i>\u2014it appeared in our twenty-sixth issue<\/a>, from Summer\/Fall 1961, alongside work by Norman Mailer<\/a>, Thom Gunn, Malcolm Lowry, and Tom Keogh, among many others; there were also interviews with Ilya Ehrenburg<\/a> and Marianne Moore<\/a>. (\u201cI have a passion for rhythm and accent, so blundered into versifying.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In the sumptuousness of a line like \u201cMy slippers \/ exhale lam\u00e9,\u201d \u201cDayley Island\u201d bears the traces of what would become, to me, a Seidel hallmark: a certain brand of knowing, luxurious weariness. The poem also makes elegant use of one of my all-time favorite verbs, the arrantly unpoetic \u201cwinterize.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s it about<\/i>, you ask? Well, far be it for me to say. But a brief round of Googling did reveal this amusingly compact summary, from a 1963 edition of The Virginia Quarterly Review<\/i>: \u201cIn \u2018Dayley Island\u2019 the slaughter of rabbits on a Maine coastal island becomes associated in the mind of an aging refugee woman psychiatrist with the extermination of her family by Nazi hands.\u201d Sounds like something to add to your Netflix queue. The VQR <\/i>also notes, approvingly, that \u201csome readers may feel \u2026 their decorum outraged\u201d by Seidel\u2019s poems.<\/p>\n

\"26\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Gulls spiral high above
The porch tiles and my gulf-green,
Cliff-hanging lawn, with their
Out-of-breath wail, as
Dawn catches the silver ball
Set in the dried up bird bath
To scare the gulls. My slippers
Exhale lam\u00e9.<\/p>\n

I was egged on by old age\u2014
To sell that house,
Winterize this house,
Give up my practice…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole poem here<\/a>, and buy your ticket to the Revel here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 8th, at our Spring Revel, we\u2019ll honor Frederick Seidel with the Hadada Award. 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