Retrospective …

… Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

A more predictably chronological walk through the decades might have highlighted the way in which Bidart’s work has evolved with experience; this more inventive sequence invites a different sort of insight. It’s true that the poems from the ’60s and ’70s, composed before Bidart found his full voice, are more straightforward, more conventional. Some, like “Herbert White” and the excellent “Ellen West,” are persona poems; others are memoir pieces written under the influence of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies. Yet what this ordering makes apparent is the remarkable consistency and unity of Bidart’s work over time.