In 2002, Frank Bidart published a sequence of poems, Music Like Dirt, the first chapbook ever to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. From the beginning, he had conceived this sequence as the opening movement in a larger structure—now, with Star Dust, finally complete.
In this profound and unforgettable new book, the dream beyond desire (which now seems to represent human destiny) is rooted in the drive to create, as the temporal being fights for its survival by struggling to make life beyond itself. Bidart is a poet of passionate originality, and Star Dust shows that the forms of this originality continue to deepen and change with each new book.
Editorial Reviews
“Bidart has a fastidious sense of poetic craft, but he has faith in primal energies too...What Bidart proposes, to balance the moral and aesthetic risks that he takes in Star Dust, is the largest possible conception of poetry's powers.” ―Langdon Hammer, The New York Times Book Review
“Just as art has impelled the poet through the remaking of his self, so Bidart has remade the tradition of poetry in English. Star Dust is not merely 'about' the desire to create: It exists as a superb embodiment of that urge...No living poet writes with Bidart's fusion of emotional ferocity and formal exactitude, of grand ambition and creaturely attentiveness. This is his strongest book.” ―Peter Campion, The Boston Globe
About the Author
Frank Bidart's most recent full-length collections of poetry are Desire (FSG, 1997) and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (FSG, 1990). He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award. Star Dust is a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry. He teaches at Wellesley College.
