April 18: Pulitzer Prize, Frank Bidart, "Poem Ending with a Sentence by Heath Ledger"

Poem Ending with a Sentence by Heath Ledger

by:  Frank Bidart

Each grinding flattened American vowel smashed to

centerlessness, his glee that whatever long ago mutilated his

mouth, he has mastered to mutilate

you: the Joker's voice, so unlike

the bruised, withheld, wounded voice of Ennis Del Mar.

Once I have the voice

that's

the line

and at

the end

of the line

is a hook

and attached

to that

is the soul.

_________________________

Frank Bidart won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry a couple days ago for his collection Half-Light:  Collected Poems 1965 - 2016.  I have always admired Bidart's work, although I have not always fully understood it.  But you don't have to completely understand a poem to fall under its spell.  That's what I would say Bidart does with his poems:  he casts spells, gives voice to the voiceless (as he does for Heath Ledger above).

Tonight, I celebrate Frank Bidart is all his confoundingness.  Yes, I made up that word to describe his poems.  It's a good word.  A word, I think, Bidart would appreciate.  He is amazing and beautiful, the way a complex math problem is amazing and beautiful, with all it's variables and logarithms and sines. 

Saint Marty minored in math, in case you didn't know.