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April 04, 2006
Pulitzer nominee gives free reading at Macalester
Poetry giant Frank Bidart gave a free poetry reading at Macalester College on last week. He recited two sequences of poetry: the first from his 2002 book, Music Like Dirt, and a second sequence of poetry that had not been previously released to the public.
Bidart, a past recipient of the National Book Award for Desire (1997), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his poetry collection, Star Dust. He has numerous other awards, and has been honored by many organizations, including the Poetry Society of America, who elected him a chancellor of American poetry in 2003.
His style of poetry is very dramatic while focusing mainly on contemporary issues, with an occasional person from a high school level history class being mentioned in the mix.
For example, in a poem about and dedicated to his deceased friend, Bidart speaks about TV and Porky Pig, and then relates them to Beethoven and Marx, all while making the audience understand his friend was not allowed to watch TV as a child. He even compares sex to luggage in one of his unreleased poems. It is poetry like this, all in free verse, that has critics praising Bidart as a powerful contemporary poet.
The reading lasted one hour with many poems delivered. He read them off of a small collection of papers, but did so with a delivery to the audience that was very personal; emphasis and pauses on certain words made the event somewhat emotional.
The crowd of roughly thirty people sat there for an hour, completely awestruck with what Bidart was saying, and then erupted with applause at the end of the presentation.
This gave way to a question and answer period, followed by an autograph session that portrayed Bidart as a very friendly man; he had lengthy conversations with every person who approached him.
If you want to check out some of Frank Bidart’s poetry, look for his books: Star Dust (2005), Music Like Dirt (2002), Desire (1997), In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-1990 (1990), Sacrifice (1983), and Golden State (1973).
Posted by dwright at April 4, 2006 12:34 PM
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