Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016

by Frank Bidart

Summary

This career spanning volume gathers Bidart's voice driven poems on desire, guilt, art, and the violence of inner life. He uses unusual capitalization and typography to score speech on the page, so that thinking itself acquires a dramatic shape. Together the poems trace a long investigation into how obsession, confession, and inheritance construct the self.

Historical Context & Significance

Bidart uses unique punctuation to mimic the actual sound of a person thinking or speaking.