“[. . .] you despised the world for replacing / God with another addiction, love. / Despised yourself. Was there no third thing?” —“For an Unwritten Opera,” page 108

i’ve seen fractions of bidart’s poetry floating around, specifically from his HALF-LIGHT collection, but this is the first time i’ve truly read a whole work by him. in METAPHYSICAL DOG, these poems straddle your mind and take you for a ride through this interesting medium of platonic idealism and the concreteness (and failures and ecstasies and, and, and—) of the physical body. there are lines that are absolutely gutting, and there were moments where i was reading aloud to get the full effect, to feel the meaning on my tongue. it’s fascinating how his brain works because the words he strings together are just . . . different.

that being said, there’s a blurb by stephen burt on the back of the book in which he says, “Bidart writes through passion, but also through subtraction.” and, after completing the METAPHYSICAL DOG, this is what’s holding me back from truly feeling it, deep in my bones, you know? like there is something about the metaphysical aspect, the “subtraction” that left me outside it. it’s not that i typically expect to fully understand poetry—poetry, in my opinion, does not need to be understood, only felt—but with this, i just felt like i was poking the borders of understanding and feeling. hence, my rating. 

anyway, i will be reading the HALF-LIGHT collection at some point in my life. we’ll see if life experience helps hehehe