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Genre/Form: | Poetry poetry Poems Poésie |
---|---|
Document Type: | Book |
All Authors / Contributors: |
Frank Bidart; Bemis/Flaherty Collection of Gay Poetry. |
ISBN: | 9780374531720 0374531722 9780374286033 0374286035 |
OCLC Number: | 317413123 |
Notes: | "Poems"--Cover. |
Awards: | "National Book Award finalist"--Cover. |
Description: | vi, 61 pages ; 22 cm. |
Contents: | Marilyn Monroe -- Tu Fu watches the spring festival across serpentine lake -- Old man at the wheel -- Like lightning across an open field -- You cannot rest -- Poem ending with three lines from "Home on the range" -- An American in Hollywood -- Seduction -- Catullus: Id faciam -- Song of the mortar and pestle -- Valentine -- With each fresh death the soul rediscovers woe -- Sanjaya at 17 -- Winter spring summer fall -- Ulanova at forty-six at last dances before a camera giselle -- Under Julian, c362 A.D. -- Candidate -- Coat -- To the republic -- God's catastrophe in our time -- Little O -- Watching the spring festival -- Hymn -- If see no end in is -- Song -- Collector. |
Responsibility: | Frank Bidart. |
More information: |
Abstract:
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.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.
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