 Frank Bidart |
Frank Bidart Dept. of English, Wellesley College
A Poetry Reading
Edited by Peter Y. Chou
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Monday, February 3, 2003, 8 PM, Kresge Auditorium, Stanford University: Eavan Boland, Director of Stanford's Creative Writing Program introduced Frank Bidart, praising his work and the wide range of his poetic expression, and welcoming him back to California. Bidart was born in Bakersfield, California, and was educated at the University of California-Riverside and at Harvard. His first book Golden State (1973) was about California and was selected by poet Richard Howard for the Braziller Poetry series. Since then he has published six volumes of poetry and has won many prestigious poetry awards. Bidart lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches at Wellesley College. He is currently editing an edition of Robert Lowell's collected poems. Bidart says: "This reading will be about love & making." I began learning modern poetry (1987) by typing several of Bidart's poems from his 1983 book The Sacrifice to improve my writing style. This is my first time hearing him. Bidart read his poems with much intensity. His facial and body gestures moved in sync with the emotions of his poetry. I jotted down the title of the poems he read and the first lines of each poem as well as lines that moved me. Later I found some of these poems on the web and in Bidart's books. I've tried to reproduce faithfully in HTML the line breaks, italicized words, indents, cap letters, em-dashes, etc. in Bidart's original. After his reading, Bidart signed the title page of his The Sacrifice which I checked out of the Stanford Library as well as the 4x5 ad on his Poetry Reading that I clipped from the Palo Alto Daily. I told him that my freshman English teacher at Columbia Engineering was Kenneth Koch who passed away last year (7-6-2002). Bidart said "You're lucky— Koch was a wonderful poet!" The three books that Bidart read from— In the Western Night, Desire, and Music Like Dirt were all checked out from the Stanford Library. Upon receiving notice of their return, I was able to fill the missing gaps and type them for this web page. [Remarks made by Bidart before reading some of his poems are denoted in brackets]. |
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(1) Dark Night (John of the Cross) In a dark night, when the light burning was the burning of love (fortuitous night, fated, free,—) as I stole from my dark house, dark house that was silent, grave, sleeping,— by the staircase that was secret, hidden, safe: disguised by darkness (fortuitous night, fated, free,—) by darkness and by cunning, dark house that was silent, grave, sleeping—; in that sweet night, secret, seen by no one and seeing nothing, my only light or guide the burning in my burning heart, night was the guide to the place where he for whom I waited, whom I had long ago chosen, waits: night brighter than noon, in which none can see—; night was the guide sweeter than the sun raw at dawn, for there the burning bridegroom is bride and he who chose at last is chosen. • As he lay sleeping on my sleepless breast, kept from the beginning for him alone, lying on the gift I gave as the restless fragrant cedars moved the restless winds,— winds from the circling parapet circling us as I lay there touching and lifting his hair,— with his sovereign hand, he wounded my neck- and my senses, when they touched that, touched nothing... In a dark night (there where I lost myself,—) as I leaned to rest in his smooth white breast, everything ceased and left me, forgotten in the grave of forgotten lilies. From In the Western Night (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1990, pp. 5-6) (2) Love Incarnate (Dante, Vita Nuova) To all those driven berserk or humanized by love this is offered, for I need help deciphering my dream. When we love our lord is LOVE. When I recall that at the fourth hour of the night, watched by shining stars, LOVE at last became incarnate, the memory is horror. In his hands smiling LOVE held my burning heart, and in his arms, the body whose greeting pierces my soul, now wrapped in bloodred, sleeping. He made him wake. He ordered him to eat my heart. He ate my burning heart. He ate it submissively, as if afraid as LOVE wept. From Desire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1997, p. 5) (3) Guilty of Dust up or down from the infinite C E N T E R B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of time the voice in my head said LOVE IS THE DISTANCE BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE • then I saw the parade of my loves those PERFORMERS comics actors singers forgetful of my very self so often I desired to die to myself to live in them then my PARENTS my FRIENDS the drained SPECTRES once filled with my baffled infatuations love and guilt and fury and sweetness for whom nail spirit yearning to the earth • then the voice in my head said WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS REVOLT AGAINST IT WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE From In the Western Night (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1990, pp. 14-15) (4) In Memory of Joe Brainard ["The Friendly Way" was a collage of voices of New England which Brainard stitched together] the remnants of a vast, oceanic bruise (wound delivered early and long ago) was in you purity and sweetness self-gathered, CHOSEN • When I tried to find words for the moral sense that unifies and sweetens the country voices in your collage The Friendly Way, you said It's a code. You were a code I yearned to decipher— In the end, the plague that full swift runs by took you, broke you;— in the end, could not take you, did not break you;— you had somehow erased within you not only meanness, but anger, the desire to punish the universe for everything not achieved, not tasted, seen again, touched—; ... the undecipherable code unbroken even as the soul learns once again the body it loves and hates is made of earth, and will betray it. From Desire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1997, p. 13) (5) The Yoke don't worry I know you're dead but tonight turn your face again toward me when I hear your voice there is now no direction in which to turn I sleep and wake and sleep and wake and sleep and wake and but tonight turn your face again toward me see upon my shoulders is the yoke that is not a yoke don't worry I know you're dead but tonight turn your face again From Desire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1997, p. 14) (6) In the Western Night 1. The Irreparable First, I was there where unheard harmonies create the harmonies we hear— then I was a dog, sniffing your crotch. I asked you why you were here; your answer was your beauty. I said I was in need. You said that the dead rule and confuse our steps— that if I helped you cut your skin deeply enough that, at least, was IRREPARABLE... This afternoon, the clouds were moving so swiftly— massed above the towers, rushing. 2. In My Desk Two cigarette butts— left by you the first time you visited my apartment. The next day I found them, they were still there— picking one up, I put my lips where yours had been ... • Our not-love is like a man running down a mountain, who, if he dares to try to stop, falls over— my hands wanted to touch your hands because we had hands. • I put the two cigarette butts in an envelope, carefully taping shut the edges. At first, the thin paper of the envelope didn't stop the stale smell of tobacco ... Now the envelope is in my desk. 3. Two Men The man who does not know himself, who does not know his affections that his actions speak but that he does not acknowledge, who will SAY ANYTHING and lie when he does not know that he is lying because what he needs to believe is true must indeed be true, THIS MAN IS STONE ... NOT BREAD. STONE. NOT CAKE. NOT CHEESE. NOT BREAD ... The man who tries to feed his hunger by gnawing stone is a FOOL; his hunger is fed in ways that he knows cannot satisfy it. 4. Epilogue: A Stanza from Horace At night in dreams I hold you and now I pursue you fleeing through the grass of the Campus Martius, you, through the waters (you are cruel) fleeing. Berkeley, California; 1983. From In the Western Night (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1990, pp. 7-11) (7) TO THE DEAD ["The Gorilla" is a movie and the Ritz Brothers were detectives in that film.] What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll see each other again,— ... and again reach the VEIN in which we loved each other ... It existed. It existed. There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,— ... for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers) in The Gorilla, once we'd been battered by the gorilla we searched the walls, the intricately carved impenetrable paneling for a button, lever, latch that unlocks a secret door that reveals at last the secret chambers, CORRIDORS within WALLS, (the disenthralling, necessary, dreamed structure beneath the structure we see,) that is the HOUSE within the HOUSE ... There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,— ... there were (for example) months when I seemed only to displease, frustrate, disappoint you—; then, something triggered a drunk lasting for days, and as you slowly and shakily sobered up, sick, throbbing with remorse and self-loathing, insight like ashes: clung to; useless; hated ... This was the viewing of the power of the waters while the waters were asleep:— secrets, histories of loves, betrayals, double-binds not fit (you thought) for the light of day ... There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,— ... for, there at times at night, still we inhabit the secret place together ... Is this wisdom, or self-pity?— The love I've known is the love of two people staring not at each other, but in the same direction. From In the Western Night (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1990, pp. 3-4) (8) For the Twentieth Century [This poem is about the centrality of making in our lives. Tapestry about making— sexuality, love, mortality. Josef Szigeti is my favorite violinist. K-218 is a Mozart violin concerto.] Bound, hungry to pluck again from the thousand technologies of ecstasy boundlessness, the world that at a drop of water rises without boundaries, I push the PLAY button:— ... Callas, Laurel & Hardy, Szigeti you are alive again,—; the slow movement of K.218 once again no longer bland, merely pretty, nearly banal, as it is in all but Szigeti's hands • Therefore you and I and Mozart must thank the Twentieth Century, for it made you pattern, form whose infinite repeatability within matter defies matter— Malibran. Henry Irving. The young Joachim. They are lost, a mountain of newspaper clippings, become words not their own words. The art of the performer. From Quarternote Chapbook Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, pp. 7-8) (9) Music Like Dirt for Desmond Dekker I will not I will not I said but as my body turned in the solitary bed it said But he loves me which broke my will. music like dirt That you did but willed and continued to will refusal you confirmed seventeen years later saying I was not wrong, music like dirt When you said I was not wrong with gravity and weird sweetness I felt not anger not woe but weird calm sweetness. music like dirt I like sentences like He especially dug doing it in houses being built or at the steering wheel. music like dirt I will not I will not I said but as my body turned in the solitary bed it said But he loves me which broke my will. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 9) (10) Young Marx ( Daedalus, Winter 2002) That man's own life is an object for him. That animals build nests, build dwellings, whereas man contemplates himself in the world that he has created: That you cannot find yourself in your labor because it does not belong to your essential being: That estranged from labor the laborer is self-estranged, alien to himself: That your nature is to labor: That feeling himself fleetingly unbound only when eating, drinking, procreating, in his dwelling and dressing-up, man erects means into sole and ultimate ends: That where he makes what he makes, he is not: That when he makes, he is not: Thus the ground of our self-estrangement. — Marx in 1844, before the solutions that he proposed betrayed him by entering history, before, like Jesus, too many sins were committed in his name. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 10) (11) For Bill Nestrick (1940-96) Out of the rectitude and narrow care of those who teach in the public schools,— a mother who would not let her son watch cartoons of Porky Pig because we must not laugh at someone who stutters,— ... the mystery, your brilliant appetite for the moment. • For Herbert, the aesthetic desideratum is unpremeditated art, not as "natural" or "spontaneous" but a speaking of the Spirit as it becomes conscious, a fidelity to the moment itself. The only appropriate gift is discovered to be inseparable from the giver, for man can only give himself. In 1975, the magazine that printed your great essay announced: He is writing a book on Herbert. • You lived in the realm where coin of the realm is a book, and despite the fact that by the end of graduate school you already had published twenty thousand articles you never published a book. Against the background of this bitter mysterious lapse your brilliant appetite for the moment. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, pp. 11-12) (12) Little Fugue at birth you were handed a ticket beneath every journey the ticket to this journey in one direction or say the body is a conveyor belt, moving in one direction slower or swifter than sight at birth you were handed a ticket, indecipherable rectangle forgotten in your pocket or say you stand upon a moving walkway as if all you fear is losing your balance moving in one direction beneath every journey the ticket to this journey in one direction From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 13) (13) Advice to the Players (Harvard Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1999) There is something missing in our definition, vision, of a human being: the need to make. • We are creatures who need to make. • Because existence is willy-nilly thrust into our hands, our fate is to make something— if nothing else, the shape cut by the arc of our lives. • My parents saw corrosively the arc of their lives. • Making is the mirror in which we see ourselves. • But being is making: not only large things, a family, a book, a business: but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between two friends, a meal. • Or mis-shape. • Without clarity about what we make, and the choices that underlie it, the need to make is a curse, a misfortune. • The culture in which we live honors specific kinds of making (shaping or mis-shaping a business, a family) but does not understand how central making itself is as manifestation and mirror of the self, fundamental as eating or sleeping. • In the images with which our culture incessantly bombards us, the cessation of labor is the beginning of pleasure; the goal of work is to cease working, an endless paradise of unending diversion. • In the United States at the end of the twentieth century, the greatest luxury is to live a life in which the work that one does to earn a living, and what one has the appetite to make, coincide— by a kind of grace are the same, one. • Without clarity, a curse, a misfortune. • My intuition about what is of course unprovable comes, I'm sure, from observing, absorbing as a child the lives of my parents: the dilemmas, contradictions, chaos as they lived out their own often unacknowledged, barely examined desires to make. • They saw corrosively the shape cut by the arc of their lives. • My parents never made something commensurate to their will to make, which I take to be, in varying degrees, the general human condition— as it is my own. • Making is the mirror in which we see ourselves. • Without clarity, a curse, a misfortune. • Horrible the fate of the advice-giver in our culture: to repeat oneself in a thousand contexts until death, or irrelevance. • I abjure advice-giver. • Go make you ready. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, pp. 14-17) (14) Stanzas Ending with the Same Two Words At first I felt shame because I had entered through the door marked Your Death. Not a valuable word written unsteeped in your death. You are the ruin whose arm encircles the young woman at the posthuous bar, before your death. The grass is still hungry above you, fed by your death. Kill whatever killed your father, your life turning to me again said before your death. Hard to grow old still hungry. You were still hungry at your death. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 18) (15) The Poem Is a Veil [This is a short poem— only three lines. I'm reading it just once.] V E I L,— as if silk that you in fury must thrust repeatedly high at what the eye, your eye, naked cannot see catches, clinging to its physiognomy. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 19) (16) Luggage You wear your body as if without illusions. You speak of former lovers with some contempt for their interest in sex. Wisdom of the spirit, you imply, lies in condescension and poise. ... Fucking, I can feel the valve opening, the flood is too much. Or too little. I am insatiable, famished by repetition. Now all you see is that I am luggage that smiles as it is moved from here to there. We could have had ecstasies. In your stray moments, as now in mine, may what was not rise like grief before you. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 20) (17) Hammer The stone arm raising a stone hammer dreams it can descend upon itself. When the quest is indecipherable,— ... what is left is a career. What once was apprehended in passion survives as opinion. To be both author of this statue, and the statue itself. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 21) (18) Injunction (Ploughshares, Fall 2001) As if the names we use to name the uses of buildings x-ray our souls, war without end: Palace. Prison. Temple. School. Market. Theater. Brothel. Bank. War without end. Because to name is to possess the dreams of strangers, the temple is offended by, demands the abolition of brothel, now theater, now school; the school despises temple, palace, market, bank; the bank by refusing to name depositors welcomes all, though in rage prisoners each night gnaw to dust another stone piling under the palace. War without end. Therefore time past time: Rip through the fabric. Nail it. Not to the wall. Rip through the wall. Outside time. Nail it. From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 22) (19) Heart Beat ear early tuned to hear beneath the call to end eating flesh, sentient suffering beings (creatures bred now for slaughter will then never be bred) less life less life tuned to hear still the vow solemn and implacable I made as a kid walking a sidewalk in Bakersfield never to have a child, condemn a creature to this hell as the prisoner chorus in wonder is released into the sun, ear early tuned to hear beneath the melody the ground-bass) less life less life From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 23) (20) Legacy (The Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1999) [At the end of this poem there's a quote of Robert Frost & one of William Carlos Williams.] When to the desert, the dirt, comes water comes money to get off the shitdirt land and move to the city whence you direct the work of those who now work the land you still own My grandparents left home for the American desert to escape poverty, or the family who said You are the son who shall become a priest After Spain became Franco's, at last rich enough to return you refused to return The West you made was never unstoried, never artless Excrement of the sky our rage inherits there was no gift outright we were never the land's From Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, pp. 24-25) (21) Lament for the Makers [This poem pays tribute to a 15th century poet William Dunbar (1465-1520)] Not bird not badger not beaver not bee Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make My father's ring was a B with a dart through it, in diamonds against polished black stone. I have it. What parents leave you is their lives. Until my mother died she struggled to make a house that she did not loathe; paintings; poems; me. Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make Not bird not badger not beaver not bee • Teach me, masters who by making were remade, your art. From Music Like Dirt, (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2002, p. 26) (22) The Second Hour of the Night (Part III) On such a night, at such an hour, when the inhabitants of the temple of delight assume for each of us one profile, different of course for each of us, but for each of us, single:— when the present avatar of powers not present though present through him, different for each of us, steps to the end of the line of other, earlier inhabitants of the temple of delight, different for each of us:— when the gathering turns for its portrait and by a sudden trick of alignment and light and night, all I see the same, the same, the same, the same, the same— on such a night, at such an hour, ... grace is the dream, half- dream, half- light, when you appear and do not answer the question that I have asked you but courteously ask (because you are dead) if you can briefly borrow, inhabit my body. When I look I can see my body away from me, sleeping. I say Yes. Then you enter it like a shudder as if eager again to know what it is to move within arms and legs. I thought, I know that he will return it. I trusted in that none earlier, none other. • I tasted a sweet taste, I found nothing sweeter. Taste. My pleasant fragrance has stripped itself to stink. Taste. The lust of the sweetness that is bitter I taste. Taste. Custom both sweet and bitter is the intercourse of this flesh. Taste. the milk that is in all trees, the sweet water that is beneath. Taste. The knife of cutting is the book of mysteries. Taste. Bitterness sweetness, eat that you may eat. Taste. I tasted a sweet taste, I found nothing sweeter. Taste. These herbs were gathered at full noon, which was night. Taste. • ... bodies carrying bodies, some to bury in earth what offended earth by breathing, others become the vessels of the dead, the voice erased by death now, for a time, unerased. • infinite the sounds the poems seeking to be allowed to S U B M I T,— that this dust become seed like those extinguished stars whose fires still give us light • This is the end of the second hour of the night. From Desire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 1997, pp. 57-59) ***********************************************
Poetry Books by Frank Bidart: (at Amazon.com)
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