The poetry of Frank Bidart is best known for the intensity of its philosophical inquiries and for its treatments of psychopathology. As regards the first of these, Bidart has explored, with a focus unparalleled in contemporary poetry, the history of Western conceptuality in three long sequences based on the Egyptian “hours of the night”: “The First Hour of the Night”, “The Second Hour of the Night”, and “The Third Hour of the Night”. [These poems appear, respectively, in the volumes In The Western Night (1990), Desire (1997), and Stardust (2005). The first version of the Book of the Night comes from the Osireion of Abydos and extends only to the Ninth hour of the night. Bidart has said in …
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Citation: Gray, Jeffrey. "Frank Bidart". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12107, accessed 24 November 2024.]
