Frank Bidart

Jeffrey Gray (Seton Hall University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 27 May 1939
Activity 1973-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Poet
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Bidart's Works

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The poetry of Frank Bidart is best known for the intensity of its philosophical inquiries and for its treatments of psychopathology. As regards the first of these, Bidart has explored, with a focus unparalleled in contemporary poetry, the history of Western conceptuality in three long sequences based on the Egyptian “hours of the night”: “The First Hour of the Night”, “The Second Hour of the Night”, and “The Third Hour of the Night”. [These poems appear, respectively, in the volumes

In The Western Night

(1990),

Desire

(1997), and

Stardust

(2005). The first version of the Book of the Night comes from the Osireion of Abydos and extends only to the Ninth hour of the night. Bidart has said in conversation that he does not think it likely that time will allow him to get that…

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2982 words

Citation: Gray, Jeffrey. "Frank Bidart". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12107, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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