Back in June I covered a Frank Bidart reading for the excellent new Poetry Foundation
website, and they've now posted my dispatch. I began this way:
For his June reading at Manhattan's New School, Frank Bidart was dressed from head to toe in black. This puritanical garb, combined with Bidart's high forehead, pointy nose, and shock of gray hair, suggested a chic version of Ichabod Crane. Yet Bidart, who was participating in the school's Summer Writers Colony program, warmed to his audience at once. As well he might: the 30 or so people in the room had already spent three classroom sessions studying his latest collection, Star Dust: Poems, which was nominated for the 2005 National Book Award. Now, after an ecstatic introduction by Dan Chiasson (who called Star Dust one of the "half dozen greatest books of poetry published in my lifetime"), the poet was here in the flesh. He began by taking requests from the crowd.
You can read the rest
here.
# posted by James Marcus @ 10:36 AM
