Frank Bidart has always defied expectation and convention without ever sounding conscious of such an effort or veering into self-parody. Bidart s poetry is often all at once deeply generous of spirit, terrifyingly beautiful, and verging on the ecstatic in its glimpse of great turbulence just beneath the surface. Rhythmically Bidart possesses an astute sense of the music of speech, both on the page and in the earproving again Frost s assertion that a dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. In the process Bidart forges a unique and uniquely American voice that combines,...