The Book of the Body

by Frank Bidart

Stated First Edition 1977

Genres: Poetry

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Frank Bidart is the author of Metaphysical Dog (FSG, 2013), Watching the Spring Festival (FSG, 2008), Star Dust (FSG, 2005), Desire (FSG, 1997), and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (FSG, 1990). He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award, the 2007 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches at Wellesley College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Gus · Rating 5 out of 5]

The voice of "Ellen West" always destroys me.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was eye level with this collection. May be my favorite Bidart. His intelligence obfuscation honesty - he's an old time explorer in search of spices.

[Julie Jordan Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 4: The Book of Body Frank Bidart


I wanted to read a collection of Frank Bidart’s and I needed it to be relatively short. These were the complete requirements in choosing this title AND I could not be more pleased than I am in having this be my read for Day 4 of the Sealey Challenge.

Bidart won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2018. It is my belief he ought to be a huge celebrity to everyone in his hometown but alas, as of today he is known by some but not most. I live blocks from his high school. I once read a poem of his on a live stream broadcast and somehow he found it and wrote me an email in response. Imagine my delight!

This collection: The Book of Body, is riveting for several reasons. One is how each of the four sections is written about (and partially directly from) a different character or persona. Through the characters' voices and the notes, sketches and details from other poems in that section, the reader experiences a character sketch not unlike what I would do when creating to perform as a character in a production. This book came out in 1977 - before there was a lot of talk about disabilities, gender, death, open discussions of sexuality and mental illness (at least in genteel company).

Readers visit McLean Hospital in one of the sections, which many readers will recognize from former patients such as Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell and Sussannah Kasem. One of my favorite singer songwriters, James Taylor, was also a patient there at one time.

Bidart continues throughout his career to write poetry that non-poetry loving people find accessible and skittish people shy away from because of their candor. I enjoy the book because of its candor and form throughout. I am still shaking my head to think this was published the year I returned to California at age 15: it feels almost like the young me was waiting for this older me to finally read it.

I will undoubtedly purchase his 2018 Pulitzer winning “Half light” collection now for my personal library.

[Jack Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bizarre, yet beautiful; the poems don't seem to even try to be conventional, but their readability and fantastic characters draw you in like a hot shower. It's quick, infectious, and worth everyone's time. I'll definitely be reading more of Bidart's work--tonight, probably.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short & stunning. "Ellen West" is the keynote speaker here, but each poem (there are only five) has its own character & miniaturized world.

[Gail McConnell]

'He married
meat, and thought it was a wife.'

[Mills College Library]

811.54 B584b 1977