Against Silence

Words, voices reek of the worlds from which they
emerge: different worlds, each with its all but palpable
aroma, its parameters, limitations, promise.

Wordsthere is a gap, nonetheless always
and forever, between words and the world

slip, slide, are imprecise, BLIND, perish.

Set up a situation,
. . . then reveal an abyss.

For more than fifty years, Frank Bidart has given voice to the inner self, to the depths of his own psyche and the unforgettable characters that populate his poems. InAgainst Silence, the Pulitzer Prize winners eleventh collection of poetry, Bidart writes of the cycles we cannot escape and the feelings we cannot forget. Our history is not a tabula rasa but a repeating, refining story of love and hate, of words spoken and old cruelties enacted. Moving among the dead and the living, the figures of his life and of his past, Bidart calls reality forthwith nothing settled and nothing forgotten, we must speak.

Paperback, Nov 1st 2022