Frederick Seidel has been called many things. A "transgressive adventurer," "a demonic gentleman," "a "triumphant outsider," "a great poet of innocence," and "an example of the dangerous Male of the Species," just to name a few. Whatever you choose to call him, one thing is certain, "he radiates heat" (The New Yorker).

Now add to that: the poet of aging and decrepitude.

Widening Income Inequality, Seidel's new poetry collection, is a rhymed magnificence of sexual, historical and cultural exuberance, a sweet and bitter fever of Robespierre and Obamacare and Apollinaire, of John F. Kennedy and jihadi terror and New York City and Italian motorcycles. Rarely has poetry been this true, this dapper, or this dire. Frederick Seidel is "the most poetic of the poets and their leader into hell."