In the Western Night: Collected Poems, 1965-1990

I'm amazed that there are no reviews for this collection. Bidart's early poems are some of the most formally interesting that I have yet read, with his conversational but delightfully esoteric phrasing and his attempt to exactly articulate on the page the phrasing he hears in his mind through odd punctuation and spectacular use of white space. The best of his poems, like "Sacrifice," "Ellen West," "Herbert White," or his inhabitation of the tortured genius of Najinsky, are revelatory investigations into tumultuous minds. One of the strongest collections I have read in recent years.… (more)