Synopses & Reviews
In 2002, Frank Bidart published a sequence of poems,
Music Like Dirt, the first chapbook ever to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. From the beginning, he had conceived this sequence as the opening movement in a larger structure--now, with
Star Dust, finally complete.
Throughout his work, Bidart has been uniquely alert to the dramatic possibilities of violence; in this, and in his sense of theater, he resembles the great Jacobean dramatists. It is no accident that Webster's plays echo in "The Third Hour of the Night," the brilliant long poem that dominates the second half of Star Dust. Bidart locates in Benvenuto Cellini the speaker truest to his own vision. Who better to speak of the drive to create, not as reverie or pleasure or afterthought, but as task and burden, thwarted by the world? In its scale, sonorities, extraordinary leaps, and juxtapositions, "The Third Hour of the Night" makes an astonishing counterbalance to the intense, spare lyrics that precede it.
In this profound and unforgettable new book, the dream beyond desire (which now seems to represent human destiny) is rooted in the drive to create, a drive tormented at every stage by failure, as the temporal being fights for its survival by making an eternal life. Bidart is a poet of passionate originality, and Star Dust shows that the forms of this originality continue to deepen and change as he constantly renews his contract with the idea of truth.
Frank Bidart's most recent full-length collections of poetry are Desire and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90. He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award. He teaches at Wellesley College. A New York Times Notable Book
National Book Award FinalistA San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year In 2002, Frank Bidart published a sequence of poems, Music Like Dirt, the first chapbook ever to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. From the beginning, he had conceived this sequence as the opening movement in a larger structurenow, with Star Dust, finally complete.
Throughout his work, Bidart has been uniquely alert to the dramatic possibilities of violence; in this, and in his sense of theater, he resembles the great Jacobean dramatists. It is no accident that Websters plays echo in "The Third Hour of the Night." The brilliant long poem that dominates the second half of Star Dust. Bidart locates in Benvenuto Cellini the speaker truest to his own vision. Who better to illuminate the drive to create, not as reverie or pleasure or afterthought, but as task and burden, thwarted by not only the world but himself? Cellini in the whole of his life is pursued by makings demonic annihilating twin, the impulse to destroy. In its scale, sonorities, extraordinary leaps, and juxtapositions, "The Third Hour of the Night" makes an astonishing counterbalance to the intense, spare lyrics that precede it.
In this profound and unforgettable new book, the dream beyond desire (which now seems to represent human destiny) is rooted in the drive to create, a drive tormented at every stage by failure as the temporal being fights for its survival by making an eternal life. Bidart is a poet of passionate originality, and Star Dust shows that the forms of this originality continue to deepen and change as he constantly rediscovers the ides of truth. Frank Bidart's most recent full-length collections of poetry are Desire, and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90both published by FSG. He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award. He teaches at Wellesley College.
Review
Praise for
In the Western Night:
"Achieves a grandeur of vision few poets nowadays can match." --Alan Shapiro, Chicago Tribune
Review
"Bidart is dazzled, confounded and compelled by words, and he wants us to feel the same way . . . [He] has a fastidious sense of poetic craft, but he has faith in primal energies too . . . What Bidart proposes, to balance the moral and aesthetic risks that he takes in
Star Dust, is the largest possible conception of poetry's powers." --Langdon Hammer,
The New York Times Book Review
"Key poems that speak directly to our age--a kind of post-millennium poetry of engagement . . . Marvelous." --Megan Harlan, San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
In 2002, Frank Bidart published a sequence of poems,
Music Like Dirt, the first chapbook ever to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. From the beginning, he had conceived this sequence as the opening movement in a larger structure--now, with
Star Dust, finally complete.
Throughout his work, Bidart has been uniquely alert to the dramatic possibilities of violence; in this, and in his sense of theater, he resembles the great Jacobean dramatists. It is no accident that Webster's plays echo in "The Third Hour of the Night," the brilliant long poem that dominates the second half of Star Dust. Bidart locates in Benvenuto Cellini the speaker truest to his own vision. Who better to speak of the drive to create, not as reverie or pleasure or afterthought, but as task and burden, thwarted by the world? In its scale, sonorities, extraordinary leaps, and juxtapositions, "The Third Hour of the Night" makes an astonishing counterbalance to the intense, spare lyrics that precede it.
In this profound and unforgettable new book, the dream beyond desire (which now seems to represent human destiny) is rooted in the drive to create, a drive tormented at every stage by failure, as the temporal being fights for its survival by making an eternal life. Bidart is a poet of passionate originality, and Star Dust shows that the forms of this originality continue to deepen and change as he constantly renews his contract with the idea of truth. Star Dust is a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
About the Author
Frank Bidart's most recent full-length collections of poetry are
Desire (FSG, 1997) and
In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (FSG, 1990). He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award. He teaches at Wellesley College.