It is almost always better for a good poet to be recognised than to remain obscure. And yet it might well frustrate a good poet - and it ought to frustrate his readers - when he gets recognised for the wrong things. Frank Bidart first became famous in America (famous, that is, as American poets go) for the grisly violence of his dramatic monologues, for his poems' unusual layout and typography, and for his close association with older poets, especially with Robert Lowell (he co-edited Lowell's posthumous Collected Poems). Bidart and his poems indeed have all these qualities, but they are not the best reasons to read his poetry. That poetry - especially in his last few books - deserves to be known for the harsh, spare wisdom it imparts, for the stark, condensed style inseparable from that wisdom, and for the poet's ability to think, in verse, about memory, pain, sex and art.

LRB 6 November 2008 | PDF Download