Desire

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.