num_pages: 61
description: 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.
language: English
title: Desire: Poems
titlecomplete: Desire: Poems
genres: LGBT, Queer, Poetry
ratings_count: 455
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Poetry, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Gay Men's Poetry, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Poetry, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Poetry
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux