Aesthetic Realism & Poetry
“Poetry, like Art, is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.”
Here you can learn about the new way of seeing poetry that is in Aesthetic Realism—and read poems by Eli Siegel, including his great Nation magazine prize-winning poem, “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana.” BelowAt right, see the award-winning film, by noted filmmaker Ken Kimmelman, in which Mr. Siegel reads the poem.
Eli Siegel was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize nominee. “He belongs in the very first rank of our living artists,” wrote the poet William Carlos Williams.
Poems by Eli Siegel
Poems to Begin With:
- Character Sketch
- The Dark That Was Is Here
- Dear Birds, Tell This to Mothers
- Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana
- Must I Wait All My Life; or, The Misery Song
- Put Zebras by the Mississippi
All the Poems on This Site
An extensive selection of Mr. Siegel’s poetry, including from his books Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems and Hail, American Development
Short Poems
Including “One Question,” which has been called the shortest poem in the English language.
Civil War Poems
“We ought to know these poems, which are so different from the run-of-the-mill effusions that have flooded the market since 1861.” —Shelby Foote, noted Civil War historian and author
Translations
Eli Siegel translated works by Charles Baudelaire, Endre Ady, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Catullus and more.
What Poetry Really Is
Essays by Eli Siegel:
Lectures by Eli Siegel:
Critics Speak on Eli Siegel's Work
William Carlos Williams
Something to Say, ed. J.E.B. Breslin, New Directions, NY, 1951
“I can’t tell you how important Siegel’s work is in the light of my present understanding of the modern poem. He belongs in the very first rank of our living artists…”
Kenneth Rexroth
New York Times, 1969
“I think it’s about time Eli Siegel was moved up into the ranks of our acknowledged Leading Poets….His translations of Baudelaire and his commentaries on them rank him with the most understanding of the Baudelaire critics in any language.”
Selden Rodman
Saturday Review, August 17, 1957
“He comes up with poems…which say more (and more movingly) about here and now than any contemporary poems I have read...”
Walter Leuba
Whole in Brightness, New Mexico Quarterly, August 17, 1957
William Packard
newsART—The Smith
Poets: Their Lives & Works Understood
These discussions by Eli Siegel and Ellen Reiss and other teachers of Aesthetic Realism describe poetry technically: what makes for its music—and how the lives of poets comment importantly on the life of every person:
Selections from The Critical Muse
Resources
- Academy of American Poets
- Internet Poetry Archive
- A Guide to Literary Criticism on the Internet (Open Access)
- POETRY Magazine and the Poetry Foundation
- Poetry Society of America
- Friends of Aesthetic Realism—Countering the Lies
- Poems about New York City
A report by Ellen Reiss of a talk Eli Siegel gave on the Village Vanguard and Greenwich Village
Eli Siegel’s poem about the used bookstores that once lined NYC’s Fourth Avenue