Vijay Seshadri

Biography

Vijay Seshadri is author of the poetry books Wild Kingdom (Graywolf, 1996), The Long Meadow (Graywolf, 2005), The Disappearances, (Harper Collins, 2007), 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013), and That Was Now, This Is Then (Graywolf, 2020), as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. His work has been widely published and anthologized and recognized with a number of honors, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2020

The Idol of the Tribe

By Vijay Seshadri

I look at you with my vexed eye.
I look at you with my hostile eye.
I look at you with my hostile and vexed eye.
My hostile, vexed eye is a wrench.

POETRY / Summer 2020

Night City

By Vijay Seshadri

What happened to the city that made us 
promises, promises we had the luxury 
to believe or not?
Night caved its streets, 

POETRY / Summer 2020

Man and Woman Talking

By Vijay Seshadri

Lighted room. Man and Woman enter talking.

—I mean, we built the world.

—What do you mean?

POETRY / Summer 2020

Who Is This Guy?

By Vijay Seshadri

Now that I’m dead too, just like the living dead on TV, 
fat chance that the merely living will be saved 
by doing what they did when I was merely living— 
nailing their doors shut against me, 
hurricane-proofing the windows, 
positioning...