{"id":68616,"date":"2014-03-25T15:30:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T19:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=68616"},"modified":"2014-03-25T17:28:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T21:28:46","slug":"for-holly-andersen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/25\/for-holly-andersen\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFor Holly Andersen\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

On April 8, at our Spring Revel<\/a>, we\u2019ll honor Frederick Seidel with the Hadada Award. In the weeks leading up the Revel, we\u2019re looking at Seidel\u2019s poems<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"arvind<\/a>

Bemelman’s Bar in the Carlyle Hotel, New York. Photo: Arvind Grover<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the weekend, I turned on\u00a0Studio 360<\/a>. A cardiologist was describing the health benefits of dance\u2014and this cardiologist was none other than Holly Andersen, hero of a great poem by Frederick Seidel, from his 2006 collection, Ooga-Booga<\/em>. Dr. Andersen is also the dedicatee of the poem. I guess you could say she is its muse, but hero is the better word. This is a poem about heroism: doing your job in the face of death. It happens also to be a love poem, for in Seidel\u2019s work love and admiration are rarely far apart.\u00a0I never have a drink at the Carlyle Hotel without thinking of the first lines, and I think of the last lines much more often than that.<\/p>\n

Seidel has never given a public reading, but he has made several recordings of his poems, including this one. I played it as soon as the segment was over.<\/p>\n