Watching The Spring Festival

Bidart -- winner of the 2007 Bollingen Prize -- is one of the most unique voices in American literature. His latest collection contains one longish poem ("Ulanova at Forty-Six At Last Dances Before a Camera Giselle") but is devoid of such epics as "The Third Hour of the Night," (from his previous collection Star Dust.) It does however contain some of his most beautiful and provacotive shorter lyrics to date. Stand-outs include "An American in Hollywood," "To the Republic," "God's Catastrophe in Our Time," and "Hymn." If you're unfamiliar with Bidart's poetry Watching the Spring Festival will prove to be an excellent introduction.

This is Frank Bidart’s first book of lyrics—his first book not dominated by long poems. Narrative elaboration becomes speed and song. Less embattled than earlier work, less actively violent, these new poems have, by conceding time’s finalities and triumphs, acquired a dark radiance unlike anything seen before in Bidart’s long career.

 

Mortality—imminent, not theoretical—forces the self to question the relation between the actual life lived and what was once the promise of transformation. This plays out against a broad landscape. The book opens with Marilyn Monroe, followed by the glamour of the eighth-century Chinese imperial court (seen through the eyes of one of China’s greatest poets, Tu Fu). At the center of the book is an ambitious meditation on the Russian ballerina Ulanova, Giselle, and the nature of tragedy. All this gives new dimension and poignance to Bidart’s recurring preoccupation with the human need to leave behind some record or emblem, a made thing that stands, in the face of death, for the possibilities of art.

 

Bidart, winner of the 2007 Bollingen Prize in American Poetry, is widely acknowledged as one of the significant poets of his time. This is perhaps his most accessible, mysterious, and austerely beautiful book.

Frank Bidart’s most recent full-length collections of poetry are Star Dust (FSG, 2005), Desire (FSG, 1997), and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965–90 (FSG, 1990). He has won many prizes, including the 2007 Bollingen Prize in American Poetry.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Distributor: MPS
Publication Date: 04-01-2008
Pages: 72
Measurements: 8.260in X 6.240in X 0.460in