Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart Poems
What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--
. . . and again reach the VEIN
...
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
...
(Dante, Vita Nuova)
To all those driven berserk or humanized by love
...
up or down from the infinite C E N T E R
B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of time
the voice in my head said
...
He's still young--; thirty, but looks younger--
or does he?... In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother,--
puffy; angry; bewildered... Many nights,
...
In a dark night, when the light
burning was the burning of love (fortuitous
night, fated, free,--)
as I stole from my dark house, dark
...
. . .telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,--
...
Bound, hungry to pluck again from the thousand
technologies of ecstasy
boundlessness, the world that at a drop of water
...
What none knows is when, not if.
Now that your life nears its end
when you turn back what you see
is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,
...
the remnant of a vast, oceanic
bruise (wound delivered early and long ago)
was in you purity and
...
It is what recurs that we believe,
your face not at one moment looking
sideways up at me anguished or
...
The planet turns there without you, beautiful.
Exiled by death you cannot
touch it. Weird joy to watch postulates
...
The Best Poem Of Frank Bidart
To The Dead
What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--
. . . and again reach the VEIN
in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,
once we'd been battered by the gorilla
we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling
for a button, lever, latch
that unlocks a secret door that
reveals at last the secret chambers,
CORRIDORS within WALLS,
(the disenthralling, necessary, dreamed structure
beneath the structure we see,)
that is the HOUSE within the HOUSE . . .
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
. . . there were (for example) months when I seemed only
to displease, frustrate,
disappoint you--; then, something triggered
a drunk lasting for days, and as you
slowly and shakily sobered up,
sick, throbbing with remorse and self-loathing,
insight like ashes: clung
to; useless; hated . . .
This was the viewing of the power of the waters
while the waters were asleep:--
secrets, histories of loves, betrayals, double-binds
not fit (you thought) for the light of day . . .
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
. . . for, there at times at night, still we
inhabit the secret place together . . .
Is this wisdom, or self-pity?--
The love I've known is the love of
two people staring
not at each other, but in the same direction.
Frank Bidart Comments
The poem, 'To The Republic', in the Apr.24,2006 issue of The New Yorker was not only a perfect statement, but almost the saddest I have ever read. To think this group in power has shamed the the heroes that have gone before is beyond belief. Thanks to Frank Bidart for this wonderful poem.
Frank Bidart Popularity
Frank Bidart Popularity
Delivering Poems Around The World
Poems are the property of their respective owners. All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes to benefit site visitors, and is provided at no charge...
4/23/2024 12:43:37 PM # 1.0.0.1119
If it's gotta be confessional, let it be Bidart. MM