April 2

These two celebrated American poets, who first appeared together at Seton Hall in 1996, return to us, each with a new volume of poems. Bidart's eagerly awaited book Desire is his first since In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-1990. It contains the long multi-voiced poem "The Second Hour of the Night," which draws on the writings of Berlioz and Ovid to continue the meditation of his earlier "The First Hour of the Night," exploring loss, sexuality, and the sources of the poetic urge. "It can be said of Bidart as of no other poet now writing in English that he truly expresses the civilization of which he is a part…he accumulates and broods over the collective experience of Western culture and deepens that culture with his own response."-Library Journal

J.D.McClatchy is the author of four collections of poems-Scenes from Another Life (1981), Stars Principal (1986), The Rest of the Way (1990), and Ten Commandments (1998), which will be released just before his reading at Seton Hall. Editor of The Yale Review, McClatchy has also edited numerous collections and anthologies, such as The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (1996) and The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1990). In addition, his role in the world of opera is increasingly prominent; he has written four libretti, most recently for Tobias Picker's Emmeline, commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera, premiered there in 1996, broadcast on PBS, and revived at the New York City Opera in 1998.