Star Dust Poems

by Bidart, Frank

• ISBN13: 9780374530334
• ISBN10: 0374530335
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-30
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

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, withStar Dust, finally complete. 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, andStar Dustshows 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 full-length collections of poetry areDesire andIn the Western Night:Collected Poems 1965-90--both published by FSG. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Wallace Stevens Award and the Bobbitt Prize. In 2007, he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. He teaches at Wellesley College. A National Book Award Finalist 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, withStar Dust, finally complete. 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, as the temporal being fights for its survival by struggling to make a life beyond itself. Bidart is a poet of passionate originality, andStar Dustshows that the forms of this originality continue to deepen and change with each new book. "Just as art has impelled the poet through the remaking of his self, so Bidart has remade the tradition of poetry in English.Star Dustis not merely 'about' the desire to create: It exists as a superb embodiment of that urge . . . No living poet writes with Bidart's fusion of emotional ferocity and formal exactitude, of grand ambition and creaturely attentiveness. This is his strongest book."--Peter Campion,The Boston Globe "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 inStar 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."--Megan Harlan,San Francisco Chronicle "This is writing of high drama and thrilling beauty, recalling Webster and Marlowe in the dark extravagance of its sounds . . . It is worth remarking how engagingly readable his poems are, how often they delight through the sheer suspense of their narratives. This is not something, in the early twenty-first century, one can often say of our poets . . . It is this ferociousness--in his increasingly constant pursuit of beauty, his refusal of the comfort of our common illusions, and his devotion, however despairing, to the ideal of an intelligible life--that grants Bidart, among our current poets, an eminence almost without rival."--Garth Greenwell,Parnassus "Frank Bidart's new collection carries the imprimaturs of greatness . . . [Bidart is] not only one of our most challenging poets, but also one of our most responsible."&

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

I Music Like Dirt
FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY	3	(2)
MUSIC LIKE DIRT	5	(1)
YOUNG MARX	6	(1)
FOR BILL NESTRICK (1940-96)	7	(2)
LITTLE FUGUE	9	(1)
ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS	10	(4)
STANZAS ENDING WITH THE SAME TWO WORDS	14	(1)
THE POEM IS A VEIL	15	(1)
LUGGAGE	16	(1)
HAMMER	17	(1)
INJUNCTION	18	(1)
HEART BEAT	19	(1)
LEGACY	20	(2)
LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS	22	(3)
II
CURSE	25	(2)
KNOT	27	(1)
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE PRICK	28	(2)
THE SOLDIER WHO GUARDS THE FRONTIER	30	(2)
ROMAIN CLEROU	32	(1)
HADRIAN'S DEATHBED	33	(1)
SONG	34	(1)
STAR DUST	35	(2)
THE THIRD HOUR OF THE NIGHT	37	(46)
Notes	83	(2)
An Interview with Frank Bidart	85