Authenticity …

… Review: The truth-telling poems of Frank Bidart | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Reading these poems is like reading the Marquis de Sade through the lens of Ignatius Loyola and John of the Cross (or vice versa). Here is a poem Bidart wrote at the age of 73, called, quite simply, “Queer.” “Lie to yourself about this and you will/ forever lie about everything,” he writes.