Frank Bidart Biography

American poet, born in Bakersfield, California, educated at the University of California at Riverside and at Harvard University. Bidart studied under Robert Lowell at Harvard and is generally discussed as one of that younger generation of ‘post-confessional’ poets which acknowledges Lowell as a major influence whilst at the same time seeking to extend and develop the confessional lyric medium he bequeathed. Bidart's verse is notable for its attempt to dramatize ordinary speech, and individual poems often take the form of dramatic monologues in a manner that resembles the similar use of this medium in the poetry of Robert Browning and Robert Frost. His volumes of verse include Golden State (1973), The Book of the Body (1977), The Sacrifice (1983), and In the Western Night: Collected Poems, 1965–1990 (1990). Bidart became a Professor of English at Wellesley College and has also taught at Brandeis University and the University of California at Berkeley.