On Frank Bidart : fastening the voice to the page
Frank Bidart has always defied expectation and convention without ever sounding conscious of such an effort or veering into self-parody. Bidart{u2019}s poetry is often all at once deeply generous of spirit, terrifyingly beautiful, and verging on the ecstatic in its glimpse of great turbulence just beneath the surface. Rhythmically Bidart possesses an astute sense of the music of speech, both on the page and in the ear{u2014}proving again Frost{u2019}s assertion that 2a dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence.3 In the process Bidart forges a unique and uniquely American voice that combines, writes Seamus Heaney in one of this book{u2019}s essays, 2a Dantesque severity with an immediacy of voice and a contemporaneity of idiom that [is] as alive to the resources of the tape-deck as it [is] to the tradition of terza rima.3
Print Book, English, ©2007
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, ©2007
Criticism, interpretation, etc
vii, 216 pages ; 23 cm.
9780472109555, 9780472032006, 0472109553, 0472032003
75088053
Overview : memoirs, essays, conversations
Frank Bidart : a salute / Seamus Heaney
Frank Bidart and the tone of contemporary poetry / Langdon Hammer
Frank Bidart's voice / Tom Sleigh
Frank Bidart and punctuation / Lloyd Schwartz
"The tumult in the heart keeps asking questions ..." / Alice Mattison
Presence : Frank Bidart / Dan Chiasson
An interview with Frank Bidart / Andrew Rathmann and Danielle Allen
Bookslut interview with Frank Bidart / Adam Travis
Reviews
On Golden State / Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop
Introduction to Golden State / Richard Howard
From "Dealing with tradition" / Jonathan Galassi
From "History has to live with what was here" / Alan Williamson
From "The discursive aspect of poetry" / Robert Pinsky
From "Other voices, other tones" / Donald Hall
On Ellen West / Edmund White
From "Recent poetry : ten poets" / Helen Vendler
On "The war of Vaslav Nijinsky" / Fred Chappell
Burnt offerings / Sven Birkerts
From "The prosaic principle" / David Lehman
On the sacrifice / Michael Chabon
From "Recombinative poetry" / Robert McDowell
Bidart's The Sacrifice / Liam Rector
From "Imagination pressing back" / Helen Vendler
From "Research in the absolute" / Anne Winters
Reliving the legacies / Alan Shapiro
From "The forbidden" / Louise Gluck
"We are the wheel to which we are bound' Frank Bidart's Desire / Karl Kirchwey
Finding truth's beauty / Stephen Burt
Frank Bidart, tragedian / Cal Bedient
The westerner / Vijay Seshadri
The night-world of Desire / David Gewanter
The art of inhabiting the body / Forrest Gander
The Poiesis of human performance / Andrew Rathmann
The very rich hours of Frank Bidart / James Longenbach
Frank Bidart, lyric poet / Garth Greenwell