Desire: Poems Paperback – March 30, 1999

I love and cherish 'Metaphysical Dog' and so I wanted to go back and read what came before. This was not the same, consuming, awful and wonderful reading experience I found in 'Dog' but that's okay, too. I will keep reading Bidart,and imagine that as I do so the individual books will clarify and mean more to me.

Bidart's poetry resonates with painful honesty. He is truly one of the greatest living poets. This is a beautiful collection.

Half the book is one long essay. A worthy one, but one that without this would merely be a pamphlet.

This poet is interesting - most of the poems are inspiring.

As described

"The Second Hour of the Night" is probably the best long poem written in English in the past few decades. This book was robbed of the Pulitzer, and is worth buying (or just reading) for it alone. The first half of the book is, honestly, just filler. But the second, final poem makes up for it!

Bidart's explorations of desire in terms of contemporary love contrasting with ancient myth interlacing work based on Tacitus and Illiad, particularly in the second section, the massive 33-page poem entitled The Second Hour of the Night based on the myth of Myrrha. Bidart's sparse writing really works in the first section despite how heavily allusive and somewhat ironic they can be.

An intriguing collection split between modern love and ancient lore. About half of the poems circle around love and the loss of the beloved. Less interesting to me were the poems focusing on ancient wars and myths, although the myth covered in the extensive Second Hour of the Night reaches heights of evocative sadness. I picked up this book because I found the style edgy and experimental, and it succeeded in stimulating my sensitivity to unorthodox ways of expression.