Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

I hate and--love. The sleepless body hammering a nail nails itself, hanging crucified.--from "Catullus: Excrucior" In Frank Bidart's collection of poems, the encounter with desire is the encounter with destiny. The first half contains some of Bidart's most luminous and intimate work-poems about the art of writing, Eros, and the desolations and mirror of history (in a spectacular narrative based on Tacitus). The second half of the book exts the overt lyricism of the opening section into even more ambitious territory-"The Second Hour of the Night" may be Bidart's most profound and complex meditation on the illusion of will, his most seductive dramatic poem to date.

Desire is a 1997 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Published: 03/30/1999
ISBN: 9780374525996
Pages: 84
Weight: 0.21lbs
Size: 8.29h x 5.50w x 0.22d
Award: Boston Book Review - Winner