Michael J. Bidart, a prominent attorney and alumnus of Cal Poly Pomona, has donated $100,000 to the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences (CLASS)’s California Center for Ethics and Policy (CCEP) to establish the Bernard and Lucie Bidart CCEP Fellowship
His contribution exemplifies his gratitude for the transformative education he received and his commitment to helping the next generation of students succeed.
instilled in him the values of generosity and hard work.
“My parents were both very generous people,” Bidart said
“They didn’t have a lot economically to give
and I pretty much felt an obligation to give to the university where I was fortunate to go.”
Bidart balanced his studies at Cal Poly Pomona with service in the California Air National Guard during the Vietnam War
though marked by challenges—including the loss of his mother to breast cancer—set the foundation for his future.
Sidney Blumner played a pivotal role in Bidart’s success.
“I had a very dear friend who was my professor at Cal Poly; his name is Dr
and he was an inspirational teacher for me,” Bidart said
“He and his family had set up a similar scholarship in his parents’ name there at Cal Poly
And so I basically followed that lead and wanted to do the same.”
Bidart’s gift reflects his belief in the power of education to create opportunities for students from underserved backgrounds.
“I think just providing for people like myself
who came from circumstances where their parents were not educated but they valued education .
is changing their lives and giving them an opportunity and making them feel worthwhile.”
Bidart has had a distinguished legal career
As managing partner at Shernoff Bidart Echeverria LLP
including a $120.5 million verdict against Aetna
and has consistently been recognized as a Super Lawyer
His work has shaped healthcare and consumer rights litigation
protecting vulnerable populations nationwide.
Bidart demonstrates a commitment to justice
His advice to students is simple yet powerful
reflecting the wisdom of his late father.
‘Are you doing your best?’” Bidart recalled
That’s all you can expect of a person.”
Bidart hopes his gift will inspire others to contribute to Cal Poly Pomona.
“My hope is that other students who are fortunate enough to later do well in their careers [will] give back,” he said
the hope is that it will beget and give birth to future good deeds.”
Michael Bidart’s generosity is a testament to the power of education
His support ensures Cal Poly Pomona will continue to provide opportunities and transform lives for years to come.
About the California Center for Ethics and Policy (CCEP)
The California Center for Ethics and Policy (CCEP) investigates pressing national and global challenges—such as climate policy
and racism—through a Californian lens
How do these challenges impact Californians in all their diversity and complexity
and what opportunities are there for California to take leadership in addressing them
CCEP is distinctive among ethics and policy centers in focusing its programs on annual themes
This approach to our programs allows for a richer and more multifaceted investigation of ethics and policy questions than can be provided through a single lecture
CCEP selects a handful of qualified university students to serve as Ethics and Policy Fellows
Student Fellows spend the year investigating CCEP’s annual theme
Fellows participate in an intensive thematic seminar
learn about community initiatives related to the theme
and contribute to a student research conference.
Visit the California Center for Ethisc and Policy website
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The Book of the Body (1977) features the dramatic monologues of an amputee and of a suicidal anorexic
Bidart was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. He was a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets from 2003 to 2009. In 2007 Bidart received a Bollingen Prize for lifetime achievement as a poet
´La luz que nunca se apaga´ is a project that will explore the importance of making women of the Basque Diaspora visible
reclaiming their space within the Western imaginary women of the Basque Diaspora and showing how this universe
traditionally considered hypermasculinized and violent
This project will be built through a transcultural borrowing, a generic mutation and a political reinterpretation that vindicates the visual legacy of women in the visual legacy of women in the Basque diaspora through painting from a feminist and contemporary perspective
He will develop his creative project ´Janari hura´
The Etxepare Basque Institute is publishing a call for proposals for samples of literary works that may be suitable for promotion abroad
with the idea of facilitating their translation into English or French
The novelist on Virginia Woolf’s luminous prose
obsessively rereading James Baldwin and why Saint Augustine is his favourite writer
’This article is more than 5 months oldThe novelist on Virginia Woolf’s luminous prose
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell is published by Picador. To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com
The case of Réjane, killed by her partner on May 1, has been described as a form of macho violence. For a week they have had two hypotheses open: one being a macho attack given as a result of a confrontation, or the other being the couple’s intention to commit suicide. Finally, it is clarified that this was a case of macho violence.
The Women’s World March in the Basque Country has called for mobilizations this afternoon in Bidarte, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Vitoria and Pamplona. The Bidarte will be at 6:30 pm in front of the Casa del Pueblo, Bilbao at 7:00 pm in Arriaga, San Sebastian at 7:30 pm in Boulevard, Vitoria-Gasteiz at 8:00 pm in Plaza de Andra Mari Blanca and Pamplona at 8:00 pm in Plaza de la Ayuntamiento.
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It pleases me to report that according to the results of my unofficial but extensive canvassing
Australians are southern Europeans’ favourite anglophone tourists
Americans are the largest and spendiest contingent
I’m allowed to say this – not the most palatable
an entente too often freighted with Brexit animus
I’ve heard variations on all these sentiments expressed admiringly many times
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2017Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyIn Bidart’s poetry
is an act of the imagination.Illustration by Gérard DuBoisNo matter how you slice it
gay children with straight parents are born to people who are not their type
Growing up in a milieu that doesn’t reflect their desires
queer kids can’t help questioning their difference and what it means
in relation to Mom and Dad’s more socially acceptable union—even if that marriage happens to fail
(“Always that same old story— / Father Time and Mother Earth
/ A marriage on the rocks,” James Merrill wrote
in “The Broken Home.”) Standing both inside and outside the parental home
can become astute sociologists of the ways in which people respond to gay difference and to difference in general
“Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016” (Farrar
Made up of the seventy-eight-year-old author’s eight previous volumes of verse and a new sequence—the bold and elegiac “Thirst”—“Half-Light” is both the culmination of a distinguished career and a poetic ur-text about how homophobia
and a parent’s confusing love can shape a gay child
Lie to yourself about this and you willforever lie about everything
was America in the forties or fiftiesthe primary
The collection is a fraught song of the self
It’s both funny and astute of Bidart to say that his gay adolescence in the forties and fifties was America; what teen-ager doesn’t feel that he or she is the world or at the center of it
Bidart presents a queer self who resents being looked at through straight eyes
even as he demands that we all witness his voice
His style is marked by a kind of calm hysteria
as he struggles with the things that the straight world and his formerly closeted and frightened self think should remain unsaid
energetic and melancholy; he drank and chased women
His mother was resentful and dreamed of other lives—the ones she saw in movies
was the one art that Bidart remembers having access to in his home town
from an early age he was an inveterate moviegoer
(His 2008 poem “Marilyn Monroe” describes the roots of the actress’s ambition with great understanding: “Poor
you thought being rich is utterly / corrosive; and watched with envy.”) And he saw his parents’ lives unfold like a film
the backdrop of which was the macho-cowboy ranching culture of Bakersfield
“It was a culture that was intolerable to me,” Bidart said
“I knew very early that I wanted to get out of Bakersfield
I’m sure a lot of this had to do with my mother
who always wanted to get out and never did
She was scathing about the dominant value systems and dominant ways of thinking
“ ‘The Cantos’ are very brilliant and they’re also very frustrating,” he told the poet Mark Halliday in 1983
“But they were tremendously liberating in the way that they say that anything can be gotten into a poem
if you can create a structure that is large enough or strong enough
anything can retain its own identity and find its place there.”
It took Bidart years to understand that anything that went through him could be included in a poem
even one that matched the contours of his own difference
One of the hallmarks of his writing is the way it looks on the page and
sounds: he capitalizes individual words that underscore what was stressed in the preceding line
letting it float into the white space of doubt
even as other voices are introduced—voices that are separate from but inseparable from the author’s “I.”
and the personal converged in deep and controlled meditations on all that could not be controlled
including the poet’s struggle with manic depression
Bidart described to me his association with the older writer:
Fairly often I didn’t agree with his judgment about new work
but his way of thinking about the alternatives of how a line could be put together—the practical intricacies and options of how it could be written—was dazzling
He invited graduate students back to his rooms at Quincy House to see his new work
He had a lot of new work: he had begun to write the unrhymed sonnets
I liked much of them and had very specific moments that I didn’t think were quite right
I knew my response would be useless unless I was candid
He liked to quote Auden to the effect that the best reader is someone who is crazy about your work
Here was a father figure with whom Bidart could communicate without trepidation
I asked him something that involved Jean Stafford”—Lowell’s first wife—“and then said
was “healing,” after a youth spent with a father of whom he wrote
in the extraordinary title poem of his first book
When I was a child,you didn’t seem to care if I existed
in which you had less and lessoccasion for pride
the first Bidartwho ever got a B.A.; Harvard
was the crown;—but the wayyou eyed me: the bewilderment
clearly,you did try) you could not remake yourtaste
Bidart’s poem “Confessional,” from “The Sacrifice” (1983)
is a kind of companion piece to “Golden State,” one that addresses his relationship with his mother
toward whom he admits he was “predatory”—“pleased to have supplanted my father / in my mother’s affections
and then / pleased to have supplanted my stepfather.” This pleasure had its price
though: “I was the center of her life,— / and therefore
/ of her fears and obsessions.” A devout Christian
in the poem Bidart’s mother tells her son that it is their duty “to divest ourselves / of the love of CREATED BEINGS.” A refrain of the poem is “THERE WAS NO PLACE IN NATURE WE COULD MEET.” The eternal question for the gay boy: where to find natural common ground with his straight mother
whose body he does not desire but may identify with
Does this amount to rejection or a powerful form of acceptance
Through Lowell, Bidart met Elizabeth Bishop, with whom he did find a more natural meeting ground. Lowell and Bishop became muses of a sort for Bidart
He told me that he didn’t expect the older poets to understand his prosody
“how I made lines and the relation between my lines and space on the page and common speech.” And he knew that “imitating them would have been death for me as a writer.” Lowell and Bishop were less teachers than parents of his own choosing
who encouraged him to become the artist he couldn’t be back home
“I knew that knowing them—and the fact that
an eager kid from Bakersfield obsessed with poetry and art
in their life—was the most unlikely gift,” he told me
“I had such conflicted relationships with my real parents
the chance to be the ‘good son’ rather than the ‘bad son.’ ”
“There were moments of great pain—but knowing them
Bidart published “Golden State” after his father had died
(The poets provided the only two blurbs on the original dust jacket.) In the title poem
because you wanted herto pay half the expenses
and “His drinkingalmost drove me crazy—” Ruth once saw youstaring into a mirror,in your ubiquitous kerchief and cowboy hat,say: “Why can’t I look like a cowboy?”
You left a bag of money; and werethe unhappiest manI have ever known well
It’s in many waysa relief to have you dead
The poem asks a number of questions: Has death made Bidart’s father a woman
His cowboy drag—did he wear it for himself or to convince the women in his life of his masculinity
his son has money—and thus masculine power
is dominated by women in trouble: Bidart’s mother and a breakdown she had; Ellen West
a turn-of-the-century anorexic psychiatric patient; the “feminine” side of Bidart
The book is wild in both imagery and language
full of fury and incredulity; reading its descriptions of love and bodies is like trying to see flowers through bullet-riddled glass—the beauty on the other side of damage
“The Book of the Body” is tougher than “Golden State,” more ruthless and freer in its exploration of what constitutes the truth in autobiography—or in “confessional” poetry—and in its understanding of the ties that bind us to previous generations
although all those bodies and histories are the last thing we want to be tethered to as we struggle to liberate ourselves
he sometimes gives the impression that he wants his body to meld with the poem
April Bernard recalls attending a reading when she was a student at Harvard
I am not sure now whether I was able to appreciate the poetry as such; what I did appreciate—and was bewitched and alarmed by in almost equal measure—was Bidart’s astonishing performance
With complete concentration on the words he was saying
he paced and swooped and writhed as he read
and with aggressively flattened American vowels
I saw those “dynamics” for reading made explicit in the typography on the pages
and was able to hear his voice again in my ear
“The Book of the Body” can be viewed as a script for that kind of bewitching and alarming performance
Bidart views his mother’s collapse through the prism of his own transformations
I try to convince myself that my armisn’t there— to retain my sanity
I used to vaguely perceive the necessityof coming to terms with the stump-filled
the way my mother,years before locked in McLean’s
believed the painting of a snow-scene above her bedhad been placed there by the doctor to make her feel cold
it was therewithout relation to my mother
“The First Hour of the Night” helped find a language for the unspeakable
Where Gunn’s voice was measured and mature
Bidart entered deeply into the science fiction that was AIDS—the eeriness of its effects on the living
all those gay men who wanted to be close to someone
In “By These Waters,” he writes about tricks who are martyred by their johns’ desire:
or stand up,allowing their flies to be unzipped
however much they chargehowever much they charge
What feels real—or concrete—is the ineffability of contradictory emotions
The sleepless body hammering a nail nails itself
hanging crucified”: the two lines that make up “Catullus: Excrucior,” in “Desire” (1997)
are the work of a man who is trying to purge himself of Catholicism
The emotional scars of survival are gouges in Bidart’s skin
leaving him with the question: Why didn’t he die
They didn’t.Nothing that they did in bed that you didn’t
Bidart told me that “In the Western Night” had “exhausted something basic about the way I made poems: the extremely heavy punctuation; the way the thrusts and urgencies of the voice determined almost everything.” He continued:
I had fallen in love with [the writer and artist] Joe Brainard
I wanted to make a poem for him that was quieter
that grew out of a music and movement that were more intimate
I literally typed “A Coin for Joe” for hours almost every day for months
I had to find a way to put it down on the page that was different from any way I had found before
Somehow in this arduous process my prosody changed
As the years passed I felt that some of my old poems were
too “à haute voix,” too declaimed to the balcony
who died of AIDS-induced pneumonia in 1994
But Brainard and Brainard’s ghost became part of Bidart’s family
not only helped to make a poem; it helped to make the poet
From the 1997 poem “In Memory of Joe Brainard”:
the plague that full swift runs bytook you
you had somehow erased within you not onlymeanness
the desire to punishthe universe for everything
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What do we mean when we say a poet is great
When I use that adjective it has nothing to do with subject matter
with what the poet writes about—though it has much
to do with a poet’s handling of the subjects they choose
It has little to do with the poet’s popularity
if greatness exists—to create in ink the likeness of a believable voice
And so the conversation about greatness becomes
a conversation about which voices we believe
Against Silence is Frank Bidart’s newest collection
the poet has fastened to the page a voice—and voices within the voice—that score our world
and I go where they go to see what they see
ranging from a scene of morally questionable sexual debauchery to the making of poetry and the fallibility and promiscuity of words
folding into its range The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry
ending eventually with this ringing couplet that some wayward and impatient twenty-first-century troubadour might’ve written: “Fucked over by the old lies
the old / words must be remade to tell the truth.”
One truth is that Bidart proves an artist can work at the height of his powers in his ninth decade
His relation to his material is a model for the way to handle whatever material one has been dealt
the psychological and personal and historical grounds
that it’s as if he’s been writing one poem from the very beginning
and each collection arrives as the latest installment in a sprawling serial work
on through the wonders of Desire and Watching the Spring Festival
could it have been otherwise?—in his effort to make contact with the particular demons of his childhood
his parents’ simultaneous desire and tormented inability to love each other
not to mention the slowly-dying-even-as-it-lives flesh that we each inhabit
“is meaning.” “Only when I have no body,” he writes
serial work: This newest collection includes another “Hour” in the night
continuing Bidart’s sequence whose appearance has spanned thirty-one years and now five books
“The Fifth Hour of the Night” looks—I keep wanting to say without flinching
because the poet brings new blood to that cliché—at the collapse of the speaker’s parents’ marriage
“The terrible law of desire is that what quickens desire is what is DIFFERENT”—this as gloss on infidelity—and the capitalized words
signal for this maestro of emphasis the struggle to do more with words than they can be made to do
and the despair and the rage at that limitation
poems in the book gesture back across that existence
back to California—and to the Central Valley where he grew up the son of farmers
where Cesar Chavez led a movement that many of those farmers resented—in
“Poem with a Refrain from LeRoy Chatfield,” we hear from a close friend of Chavez
JESSE NATHAN: Your poems bring to mind Wallace Stevens’s idea that poetry can be a violence from within pushing against a violence from without
“We were born into an amazing experiment,” you write
in another poem: “As you arm yourself
as you go out among the tribe of makers in / words—arm yourself with phrases…” What is this arming that you’re talking about
But what you want—what these things help you get at
How can you represent reality and the world in words
armed (as I think) with / the secret of representation,” is what the poem goes on to say
“as I swagger out among the tribes / I become aware that I am armed with a pebble against the ocean
though / I speak I am silent.” The literary world is full of tribes
about what a good poem should sound like—most MFAs
represent some particular attitude towards the practice of making—but as I write I set out with my own little armory
and I try to set up situations and then reveal an abyss
with the voice that I’ve been given—given by Hopkins and by Yeats and by a hundred others
But there is always something larger about what one is attempting to do
and there is no one secret to representation
The other thing is that armed suggests armor
the way I’ve learned to defend against the abyss and to kill the unwritten
I think about Whitman—Whitman was constantly giving himself advice about how to do things and about what is real and about how to write poems
And he’s constantly encountering ways to challenge his habits around making
He really makes the poem out of the encounters between the way he thinks he can proceed and what he finds he can actually do
JN: Do your poems tend to come in fragments
If I can get one phrase that seems to sum up what the poem wants to be about
that phrase will tell me something about what the poem is and where it needs to go
and that’s the kernel of the secret of the poem
JN: And you use repeated phrases—repeated lines and words—to powerful effect
Do you experience repetition to be liberating
Because repetition has to do with turning a thing over and over
And each time you turn it you see some aspect you didn’t see before
An Interview with Lara Aburamadan & Jehad al-Saftawi about Their New Art Gallery
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Reading Against Silence, the eleventh collection by the American poet Frank Bidart, I was more than once put in mind of some lines from “Legend,” the opening poem of Hart Crane’s White Buildings, a modernist masterpiece from nearly a century ago that also finds its ethic in the recurrence of desire:
In case we had failed to grasp the poem’s particular historical inflection, its closing lines make explicit the connection to American race-based slavery and the revanchist regime of Jim Crow:
These lines, in turn, prepare for the collection’s most bitter reflection on the rule of ostensible necessity, which is never stronger than in the realm of fear. Like so many other lines in this book, these are haunted by the logic of Thomas Jefferson’s letter to John Holmes on slavery, in which Jefferson declares that “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” Or, as the poem puts it:
Paul Franz’s criticism and poetry appears in the Nation and the New York Review of Books, among others.
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California State University Bakersfield and the Etxepare Basque Institute have partnered to create a new Basque studies chair. Named after the well-known poet Frank Bidart, the programme will focus promoting and researching Basque culture and artistic creation.
Along with closing the agreement for the launch of the Chair, an academic programme was held on Monday, 5 December, with the participation of Irene Larraza, Director of the Etxepare Basque Institute; Garbiñe Iztueta, Etxepare’s Director for the Promotion and Dissemination of the Basque Language; Steven Gamboa, Director of the CSUB Institute for Basque Studies; and Lynnette Zelezny, President of CSU Bakersfield.
The event took place in the Dezember Reading Room at CSUB’s Walter W. Stiern Library, with CSUB’s Steven Gamboa and Lynette Zelezny, and Irene Larraza, signing the agreement. Matthew Woodman, who teaches writing at CSUB, read passages of Frank Bidart´s poetry, and writer and poet Miren Agur Meabe, read a selection of her own work.
The programme closed with a round table entitled ´Remote Writers: Close Connections Among Minor/Small Cultures´. Participants included Miren Agur Meabe; Alison Posey, Assistant Professor at Pepperdine University; Viola Miglio, Professor at University of California Santa Barbara; and Iker Arranz Otaegui, Director of the Institute for Basque Studies CSUB and Basque Studies faculty member. Arranz will be the moderator of the discussion.
The opening of the Frank Bidart Chair was joined by streamers Eneko Oroz (Ekintaekin) and Iruñe Astitz (Arkkuso). On 4 December, Miren Agur Meabe and Irene Larraza were interviewed on Eneko Oroz’s channel (twitch.tv./ekintaekin). On 5 December, the streamers talked with translator Amaia Gabantxo and with member of the Basque diaspora in Argentina, Sabrina Otegi, on Iruñe Astitz’s channel (twitch.tv/arkkuso).
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is currently dyed with indigo in an unsustainable process requiring harsh reducing and alkaline chemicals
Forming indigo directly in the yarn through indican (indoxyl-β-glucoside) is a promising alternative route with mild conditions
Indican eliminates the requirement for reducing agent while still ending as indigo
the only known molecule yielding the unique hue of blue denim
we employ enzyme and process engineering guided by techno-economic analyses to develop an economically viable drop-in indican synthesis technology
a glycosyltransferase from the indigo plant
alleviated the severe substrate inactivation observed with the wildtype enzyme at the titers needed for bulk production
These indicate that the presented technologies have the potential to significantly reduce environmental impacts from blue denim dyeing with only a modest cost increase
A production of indigo and indican in industry
B dyeing processes with indigo (currently used in industry) or indican (proposed in literature and this study) resulting in both cases with blue denim represented by a blue jean
considering the three dimensions of sustainability
To achieve economically feasible indican production
we engineer a stabilized glycosyltransferase mutant to convert indoxyl to indican at high substrate titers
a process with little environmental impact and no significant social impact
we demonstrate economically feasible and low-impact enzymatic and light-driven denim dyeing processes
which have the potential to alleviate the current pressure on textile workers’ health and livelihood
A Indican synthesis at 100 mM indoxyl using 50 μg (purple)
10 μg (green) or 5 μg (yellow) of PtUGT1 or PtUGT1stable B Thermal tolerance was probed by measuring the relative activity of PtUGT1 (grey)
mutant 88 (blue) and mutant 90 (light blue) with increasing reaction temperature
C Solvent tolerance was probed by measuring the relative activity of PtUGT1 variants in acetone (blue bars)
acetonitrile (green bars) and 2-propanol (yellow bars)
Mut88 = PtUGT1stable-F381V; Mut90 = PtUGT1stable -F381V/A388C/A399C
D Residual activity of PtUGT1 (grey bars) and PtUGT1stable (blue bars) after prolonged storage
Data are mean values ± SD n = 3.Source data are provided as a Source Data file
whereas realistic adjustments to UDP and sucrose concentrations (±50%) do not significantly affect the cost
It is worth mentioning that these impacts have been calculated based on the current European electric grid mix
Using 100% renewable energy would result in a significant decrease in environmental impact
a concept that is already applied to produce green hydrogen and ammonia
Replacing this large market with indican will require 320 tanks of 100 m3 run every second day year-round with the process parameters reported here
This will decrease the yearly global CO2 emission with 3.5 megatonnes
given 4 bn jeans traded yearly according to market analyses
workers in denim mills will no longer be exposed to harmful chemicals
This work demonstrates the power of integrating biotechnology and sustainability research to provide a direction for sustainable blue denim
Laboratory chemicals were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (USA)
Ready-to-dye denim was kindly provided by Nudie Jeans (Sweden)
Specialized materials are detailed in the sections below
10 mL pre-culture was grown overnight in 2xYT media containing ampicillin (100 μg/mL) and used to inoculate 1 L cultures of 2xYT media with ampicillin (100 μg/mL)
Cultures were grown at 37 °C in a MaxQ8000 incubator (Thermo Fisher Scientific
Germany) at 200 rpm and induced with 0.2 mM isopropyl-β-d-thiogalactopyranoside at OD600 ~ 1
Cultures were then grown at 18 °C for 21 h
and the cells were harvested by centrifugation
The cell pellets were resuspended in 50 mM HEPES pH 7.0
The cell suspension was lysed with 2 cycles through an Avestin Emulsiflex C5 homogenizer (ATA Scientific Pty Ltd.
Australia) and treated with DNAse I (Merck
Cells debris was removed by centrifugation at 15.000 x g for 20 min at 4 °C
The cleared extracts were loaded onto 1 mL nickel affinity columns (HisTrap FF
USA) and the protein was purified using an Äkta FPLC system (Cytiva
After washing the column with buffer (50 mM HEPES pH 7.0
elution was carried out with a 40‒500 mM imidazole gradient
The peak fractions were analyzed with SDS‐PAGE using NuPAGE 4‒12% Bis-Tris Protein Gels (Thermo Fisher Scientific
USA) stained with Instant Blue (Expedeon Ltd.
concentrated using a 50.000 MWCO Amicon Ultra-15 Centrifugal Filter Unit (Merck
Final protein concentrations were determined by absorbance measurements at 280 nm using a ND-1000 spectrophotometer (ThermoFischer Scientific
the reaction mixtures where added the indicated solvents and relative activities were analyzed as described and compared to the activity in the absence of solvent
The reactions were performed in duplicate in an anaerobic chamber
using glass HPLC vials stirred with small magnets at 30 °C
Reaction mixtures consisted of 3.5 mg indoxyl acetate
One extra reaction with half SuSy amount was set in parallel as control to confirm PtUGT1stable limiting conditions
Reaction mixtures were incubated overnight prior to starting the reactions by the addition of UDP-Glc
The progression was followed by HPLC as described above
These were dyed with 0.05 mg/cm2 ScGlu and varying amounts of indican (1–5 µmol/cm2) in 50 µL/cm2 of 50 mM citrate phosphate buffer pH 9 (final concentration 16.7 mM) for 4 h at room temperature without stirring
the swatches were washed with water and detergent and dried before CIEL analysis (see below)
the reaction was done in the presence of ready-to-dye textile similarly as described below
A 70 μL sample was taken from the solution at different time points and analyzed by LC-MS
Decay of indican was followed by the area under the indican peak in the UV-spectrum of the sample compared to the peak area at time point 0
the volume of the HCl solution was 0.45 mL/cm2
and shaking was done on a laboratory platform shaker
to easily compare the dying methods described in this study with data from real world jeans
Molecular structures were made in Chemdraw. The non-colored icon of the jeans that are part of Fig. 1 is licensed by CC BY 4.0 and downloaded from https://www.onlinewebfonts.com/icon/472068
No statistical method was used to predetermine sample size
The sample size of each experiment is given in the respective figure legend
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article
An overview of microbial indigo-forming enzymes
Ecological alternatives to the reduction and oxidation processes in dyeing with vat and sulphur dyes
Review on various types of pollution problem in textile dyeing & printing industries of Bangladesh and recommandation for mitigation
Textile dyeing industry an environmental hazard
Impact of industrial effluents on groundwater around Pali city
Employing a biochemical protecting group for a sustainable indigo dyeing strategy
Exploring the in Vitro Operating Window of Glycosyltransferase Pt UGT1 from Polygonum tinctorium for a Biocatalytic Route to Indigo Dye
Purification and Characterization of a β -Glucosidase from Polygonum tinctorium
Which Catalyzes Preferentially the Hydrolysis of Indican
Beta-glucosidase-catalyzed hydrolysis of indican from leaves of Polygonum tinctorium
Development of a highly efficient indigo dyeing method using indican with an immobilized β-glucosidase from Aspergillus niger
Cell-Free Biocatalysis for the Production of Platform Chemicals
The UDP glycosyltransferase gene superfamily: recommended nomenclature update based on evolutionary divergence
Some thermodynamic implications for the thermostability of proteins
Sucrose synthase: A unique glycosyltransferase for biocatalytic glycosylation process development
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and Gossa Garedew Wordofa for CIEL instrument time and technical assistance
This work was funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation through grants NNF10CC1016517 (to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability)
NNF20CC0035580 (to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability)
and Carlsberg Foundation through grant CF18-0631 (to K.Q.)
Sumesh Sukumara & Ditte Hededam Welner
Charlotte Uldahl Jansen & Katrine Qvortrup
and revised the manuscript and read and approved the final version
The authors declare the following competing interests: the Technical University of Denmark has submitted a patent application (application number WO2023161230A1) with inventors L.L.L.
The Technical University of Denmark has submitted a patent application (application number EP22194865.6) with inventors N.P.
The remaining authors declare no competing interests
Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work
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At a glitzy gala in New York City on Wednesday night
four writers emerged with one of the world's most illustrious literary prizes
the National Book Award: Jesmyn Ward's Sing
won for fiction; Masha Gessen's The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
for nonfiction; Frank Bidart's Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
for poetry; and Robin Benway's Far from the Tree
each winner receives $10,000 with the distinction
the finalists don't go home bereft — each author gets $1,000 and a bronze medal of their own
You can find the full list of finalists at the bottom of this page
Ward's National Book Award marked her second time winning the prize
after her novel Salvage the Bones won in 2011
But she said in her acceptance speech she's also received a fair amount of rejections
and it was this: People will not read your work because these are not universal stories
I don't know whether some doorkeepers felt this way because I wrote about poor people or because I wrote about black people or because I wrote about Southerners
As my career progressed and I got some affirmations
I still encountered that mindset every now and again," Ward told the crowd
To those who asked what they they could possibly have in common with her characters
editors and booksellers assembled in the room
an exhaustive chronicle of four lives in the midst of a totalitarian reemergence in Russia
"I never thought a Russia book could actually be longlisted or shortlisted for the National Book Award," she noted in her acceptance
Bidart did not win the lifetime achievement award — more on that award later — but you could be forgiven for seeing his poetry prize as something similar
Bidart's Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 gathered work from eight books' worth of material
It was not just a life of poetry contained in this book
"I realized during the past month that I'm almost twice as old as any of the other finalists
Writing the poems," Bidart told the crowd in New York City
"One premise of art is that anything personal
"I hope that the journeys these poems go on will help others to survive
The young people's literature prize went to Benway's Far from the Tree
a story of an adoptee in search of her biological siblings — and how their understanding of family shifts amid their difficult attempts at reunion
The writer of a half-dozen young adult novels
Benway focused her acceptance speech on her own family — especially those family members she has lost recently
Her grandmother taught her "creativity is not inspiration
it's not that bolt of lightning," Benway said
"It's about getting up and making the coffee and getting to work to find the room that that lightning lit up for them for that one moment."
"I'm really good at making the coffee," she added
"I'm trying to get better at that last thing."
the prevailing theme among the previously announced winners was clear: the notion of the book as a beacon in a difficult time
"We don't live in the best of all possible worlds
We live in a Kafkaesque time," said Annie Proulx
the novelist who won the medal for distinguished contribution to American letters
the National Book Foundation's slightly verbose name for their lifetime achievement award
Proulx added the distinction Wednesday night to an already long list of honors
having racked up virtually every major award devoted to American writers
singular talent" — in the words of the woman who introduced her
actress Anne Hathaway — had already earned her another National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for her 1993 novel
listing ills from the destruction of the environment to increasingly tribal political divisions
"but we keep on trying — because there's nothing else to do."
the "indispensable silver lining" books can offer
that hope could be seen embodied even in her presence on the stage
Although she may be receiving a lifetime achievement award
"I didn't start writing until I was 58," she said
"So if you've been thinking about it and putting it off
Scholastic President and CEO Richard Robinson
speaking before Proulx in receiving the literarian award for outstanding service to the American literary community
noted that he indeed had tried writing: "I always wanted to receive a prize for a novel," he said
"and I wrote several of them — unpublished."
for decades he has stood at the helm of Scholastic
a publishing company founded by his father in 1920 and geared toward children's literature
who was introduced by former President Bill Clinton
said his mission at Scholastic has been — and will continue to be — ensuring equal access to education and opening books to a wide array of experiences: "That's an old story that's always new."
"We must make sure all schools have the resources they need to lift all children," he said
he offered another note of hope to balance Proulx's
Frank Bidart: Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016Leslie Harrison: The Book of EndingsLayli Long Soldier: WHEREASShane McCrae: In the Language of My CaptorDanez Smith: Don't Call Us Dead: Poems
Arnold: What Girls Are Made OfRobin Benway: Far from the TreeErika L
Sánchez: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican DaughterRita Williams-Garcia: Clayton Byrd Goes UndergroundIbi Zoboi: American Street
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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898
the National Book Award winners were announced at a ceremony in New York City
among them the poet Frank Bidart, A.M
the long lists were released in September with 10 titles in each genre—poetry
and young adult literature—then halved a month later
the National Book Foundation recognized six books by Harvard affiliates
Bidart, A.M. ’67, won for Half-Light, which assembles a half-century’s worth of verse from over his career. In his New York Times review
Harvard Review poetry editor Major Jackson
wrote, "Bidart avoids the pitfalls of therapeutic poetry by ennobling thought itself
There’s something heroic in the maverick poet who shirks conventional aesthetics to make a temple of the mind…Let’s pray his poems continue to aim at the most pressing issues
Four of Bidart's previous collections have received nominations in the past: Desire
in 1997; Star Dust in 2005; Watching the Spring Festival
his book of lyrics from 2008; and Metaphysical Dog
was a finalist for In the Language of My Captor
also made the National Book Award long list
Charmaine Craig ’93 was named to the long list for Miss Burma
based on the lives of her mother and grandparents
Breaking news for everyone's consumption
The company is headquartered in Bakersfield
The owners are five siblings who are the grandchildren of Basque immigrant John Bidart
who came to California’s Central Valley from France in the 1880s to grow potatoes and raise livestock
FDA made numerous redactions from its inspection report such as blackening out the number of acres the Bidarts own
along with their peak season employment and the names of their major interstate customers
The facility that was the target of the investigation was first used in 1987
it shipped apples in 700-pound triwall bins to processors with only a pallet tag affixed to the shipment
Apples shipped for juice were sent in either the customer’s bins or the Bidart Bros
Apples shipped for the fresh market were packed in 3-5-pound poly bags and 3-pound mesh bags
The FDA report notes that the team “informed management that conditions observed may
be considered to be violations of the Food
and Cosmetic Act or other statues and legal sanctions available to the FDA may include seizure
As part of the cultural program organised by the Frank Bidart Chair, Olatz Gorrotxategi
will conduct several activities centered around her work
The Etxepare Basque Institute and the California State University Bakersfield established the Frank Bidart Chair in 2022 with the purpose of promoting research projects related to culture and art, as well as encouraging the development of creative projects. Olatz Gorrotxategi is the first to be selected for this programme. The fellowship is aimed at developing both research and creative projects at the CSUB Institute of Basque Studies.
originality doesn’t have to mean rejecting traditional forms
Doug McLeanThe novelist Garth Greenwell was still an undergraduate when he took the poetry class that changed his life
the course affected him so profoundly that he decided
the sound and rhythm and syntax of language—has been his obsession
“I’m a very unreligious person,” he told me
“But when I look at the weird shape my life has taken
it seems like the life of someone with a devotional temperament looking for an object of devotion.”
and has remained an especially potent source of inspiration
Greenwell explained how a line from Bidart’s prose poem “Borges and I” illuminates the complex relationship between artists and the traditions that shape them
being influenced by another writer is never a shameful sign of unoriginality
almost erotic conversation across the ages—and can be a source of a radical
an American teacher—apparently the same unnamed narrator featured in his celebrated debut
What Belongs to You—looks for connection in a grim Bulgarian city
Across nine chapters that resemble linked short stories
his doomed relationship with a young man is juxtaposed against a series of encounters with strangers
Explicit and yet brimming with psychological insight
the novel explores a poignant human irony—that sex can be self-destructive even as it is self-affirming
Garth Greenwell teaches fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work appears in venues such as The New Yorker, A Public Space, and The Paris Review, where he’s published an extensive interview with Frank Bidart
Garth Greenwell: I first discovered Frank Bidart when I was studying vocal performance at the Eastman School of Music
I took a course with the poet and critic James Longenbach at the University of Rochester
who very kindly let me into his poetry workshop
even though I had never taken a writing class before
One of the books he had us read was Frank Bidart’s Desire
and the experience of encountering Bidart’s work was absolutely overwhelming
It convinced me that poetry was the most noble thing one could devote one’s life to
I’m drawn to the seriousness and relentlessness of Bidart’s work—the sense that he is using the best tools he has
to ask the most important and difficult questions he can of life and of himself
To read him is to experience someone writing utterly without defense
from Bidart’s prose poem “Borges and I,” that for years has been a kind of motto for me: “We fill preexisting forms and when we fill them
we change them and are changed.” It’s a refrain that’s helped me develop my sense of what artistic innovation is
and what it means to innovate in a meaningful and exciting way
It has always been my prejudice—I wouldn’t want to present this as any sort of objective principle—that one is incredibly unlikely to make something great in a particular medium if one doesn’t know the great things that have been made in that medium before
of course the form conditions how one can think within it
But one wrestles with the form too—one tries to stretch it
The sonnet is not the same form after Shakespeare
This sense of reciprocity with the past—that the past and the self are not monoliths but dynamic things that change through their encounter with one another—is the idea of tradition that strikes me as most beautiful and most true
I think that’s why Harold Bloom’s concept of the anxiety of influence has never quite rung true for me
This violent idea that for a writer to make something original
they have to find faults with previous writers and disfigure them somehow
has just never been my sense of what this conversation across time is like
and there’s no question that this is a model that is true for some artists
But I wonder if it’s not so much a model that queer writers adopt
I don’t want to speak for anyone other than myself
but my feeling about the queer writers of the past is a feeling of such gratitude and homage and collaboration—a sense that they made my life and any art that I can make possible
The last thing I would want to do is sever myself from that
or somehow demolish it to clear a field for my own work
I’m drawn to the image that Bidart provides: that the past provides a structure that accommodates—that makes possible—one’s own work
that’s a beautifully different idea of what tradition might feel like
It’s about emptying oneself out to be filled up by the transforming substance of the gods
and then somehow becoming a substance oneself
one that pours into this broader container that is divinity
That kind of beautiful confusion is straight out of mystical discourse
whether it’s Plotinus or Marguerite Porete
This way of thinking about how people and works of art interact and affect each other is not about aggression or violence but is
Real art is always made at the very edge of your capacity
my feeling is not that I am making this well-wrought thing
or that there’s some ideal shape that I’m working towards as I write
is that I’m in a kind of difficult negotiation: at once willing a sentence into being while also trying to be as receptive as possible to an energy or organic force that is independent of my will
I’m writing a sentence the way one rides a horse
trying both to steer and to follow the sentence where it wants to go
Art making for me is this weird attempt to strike a perfect balance between willfulness and passivity
When I find myself surprised by what I’m writing
What is the external force I’m trying to be receptive to
although the way I describe it might seem that way
that the Holy Ghost is whispering in my ear
But I do think that language has a history
and that schooling oneself in the history of various traditions also means incorporating wills other than one’s own
countless poems from the tradition of Western poetry
that creates magnetic nodes in you—a sense of how language moves
certain syntactical patterns that are attracted to each other
Much of the act of making art is about acceding to or resisting that pull
gave me the only really helpful technical creative-writing advice I’ve ever received at the end of that semester when he had been so generous to me
“If you’re serious about this poetry thing
you will spend two years only writing in blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—and you will also scan every line of Milton’s Paradise Lost.” That’s such an extreme thing to say to a student
but I was the kind of student to go and do it
I spent two years only writing iambic pentameter lines
I’m not sure that I scanned every line of Paradise Lost
but I scanned hundreds and hundreds of lines
and thought really hard about how their rhythms were working
Those rhythms are so deeply ingrained in me now
I remember something that happened when I first started doing public readings from What Belongs to You
Reading aloud is part of my composition practice
and very much part of my revision practice
but it was only when I was reading in front of audiences that I realized that there are lines of pentameter in my prose
That doesn’t happen because I say to myself
this clause needs to be iambic pentameter.” I’m saying to myself
“This needs to feel right,” and I’ll tinker with something endlessly until it does
And I think those iambs are in my prose because those rhythms are deeply associated
with a certain feeling of authority that I wanted particular moments in the novel to have
That’s a great example of how this works: Iambic pentameter is not something that my agency has invented and is intending to impose
that exerts a kind of pressure when I’m writing
Before you write the first word of a sentence
you have almost infinite possibility—but with each word
A sentence exerts an increasing pressure of inevitability as you’re writing
Sometimes what gives pleasure in writing is giving in to that inevitability—and sometimes
it’s slipping free from that pressure by trying to open a door in a sentence
and allowing it to escape from where it seemed it would inevitably go
This dialogue with the past doesn’t feel antagonistic
one of the earliest singers I fell in love with
someone whose voice is part of the equipment of my inner life
She took forms that were hundreds of years old
and filled them with the glorious substance of her voice—and Strauss will never be the same
because we’ve heard the way she transformed them
And we have been transformed in turn by listening to her
That’s why working with preexisting forms is not a sign of unoriginality
We need preexisting forms so we can fill them and change them and be changed
We look to the past for sources of greater richness
greater depth—something I think queer people
Queer aesthetics are often invested in mining the past for resources that allow us to imagine a future
Frank Bidart, who was in New Hampshire in November to accept the 2017 Hall-Kenyon Prize in American Poetry, has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his "Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016."
The Pulitzer committee judges wrote of Bidart's book of poems: "A volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics
building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms."
Bidart spoke at the Capitol Center for the Arts on Nov. 28, after he received the Hall-Kenyon Prize presented by NHPR
The poetry prize is named in honor of former U.S
and former New Hampshire Poet Laureate Jane Kenyon
Bidart was interviewed at the reading by Virginia Prescott, host of Word of Mouth, which dedicated a segment to the conversation and his ground-breaking book of poetry
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4 weeks premature on the Upper Leonard Creek Ranch
He passed from this life 96 years later on November 17
He was born to French and Spanish Basque immigrants
Michel Bidart and Francisca Montero Bidart
His first language was Spanish and when he started school in a one room school house on Leonard Creek Ranch
He attended elementary school with his brothers
They were a wild bunch that he described as a little “brushy”; they definitely were not city material
He was the first brother to attend high school in Winnemucca
He enjoyed his time in Winnemucca with his Aunt Petra Larragueta and Uncle Fermin watching over him
He made long lasting friends and always spoke of his time as the manager of the basketball team coached by Albert Lowry
he went back to Leonard Creek where he helped with the cattle operation
He enjoyed his time away from the ranch visiting cousins and friends in California and Northern Nevada
he married the girl from Woodward Ranch that grew up around the mountain
he made some long lasting and cherished friendships and endured many long and extremely cold winters
and Frank and Jo decided to move their family across the state to Weiser
where Frank worked for Howard and Ed Raney on a feedlot
Winnemucca and family kept drawing them home
and he worked on farm machinery with his brothers
at Bidart Brothers Machinery and helped at Leonard Creek when he could
He continued to spend time at the shop tinkering around on machinery until it was sold in 1985
The sale then took the Bidart Brothers on the road for a little more than 20 years to help various ranchers get their equipment up and running
Frank enjoyed many years of riding horseback in the mountains of Northern Nevada and Idaho and travelling through the backroads to go fishing and hunting
at brandings and sheep markings and shearings
and volunteering with his brothers on the starting gates of the Mule Races
we can’t forget his good times serving steaks at Superior Livestock with the Dufurrena boys and his priceless time out at the Ranch with the Woodwards and the Nuffers
He chased kids to all their events and later did the same with grandkids
He spent an abundance of time with his best friends (his brothers) and enjoyed every opportunity to spend valuable time with family and good friends
He rarely missed a home Lowry basketball game
you would find him seated at the top of the stands
He was honored numerous times. He received the Nevada Cattlemen’s 100,000 miles award, Ranch hand of the year with his brother, Louie, Honorary Buckaroo by Lowry High School, VIP of the Lowry High Basketball team, Grand Marshall of the Basque Festival
and was inducted into the Buckaroo Hall of Fame
he enjoyed good stories and laughter with family and friends
he lived an amazing life with purpose.He was preceded in death by his brothers
numerous nieces and nephews and numerous Bidart
Graveside services will follow the services and a light dinner and drinks will be provided to allow everyone to continue to celebrate Frank
the family has requested donations be made to Lowry High School for the Joshua Rose Memorial Scholarship
LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — Del Sol Academy of the Performing Arts employee Matthew Bidart was arrested on Dec. 5 following an investigation initiated by the Clark County School District Police Department in mid-November
the school’s dean alerted police to reports from students who said the theater manager
said that they had seen Bidart holding his phone at his desk inside his office while touching himself beneath his pants
None of the students said they saw Bidart’s penis
but each described the same incident in similar detail
One student said “I went over to the window and he had his hand in his pants
there is nothing else he could have been doing
His hand was going up and down vertically underneath his pants
he had his phone in his hand with a video playing that I could not see.”
RELATED| TRIPS, TEXTS AND POT: Mom's phone call leads to CCSD teacher's arrest
Another witness said that Bidart saw that the students saw him
he said that on the day of the alleged incident he had lunch
Bidart explained the back part of his zipper “was staying down” and that he was “[expletive] with it for too long.”
When officers revealed that there were several people who saw him masturbating
saying that he was on Instagram on his phone and that he follows bikini models
Bidart continued saying that he was messing with his zipper
adding that the students could not have seen him through the window of his office because it has a curtain on it
“I would not have had time to have my [expletive] [penis] out.”
The officers pointed out what they saw as flaws in Bidart’s story including that there was no curtain on his office window and that his “zipper” excuse didn’t make any sense
Bidart replied that maybe he was “subconsciously touching or had my hand” on his penis without realizing it
Officers told him to not make anything up and gave Bidart time alone to think
Bidart admitted the following: “I was looking at Instagram and lightly caressing myself over my pants.” He said that he “vaguely” touched his penis
and when asked if he erect while touching himself
RELATED|Man arrested for lewdness with CCSD student
I never had my hands in my pants,” he said
Bidart was arrested and charged with open and gross lewdness in the presence of children under 18 years old
Bidart posted bail shortly after his arrest
His next court date had not been posted at the time of writing
Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 gathers in a single volume of 700-plus pages the poems Frank Bidart has written (often in blood) over the past half-century
Here are Bidart’s previous eight volumes plus a new sequence
All of which can be said to be about the self or—in Yeats’s sense—the anti-self refracted through the transfigurative lenses of history and myth
Half-Lightby Frank BidartFarrar
Half-Light gives us a window into the gay poet who grew up in the cowboy country of Bakersfield
the only child of parents who eventually divorced and never acknowledged their son’s sexuality
He didn’t “come out” until both parents were dead
Bidart is fascinated by the movies he saw as a boy
the only seat of culture available in his town—movies starring Carmen Miranda
Marilyn Monroe or Ava Gardner in the 1951 Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
and its obsession with love fulfilled (or not) only in death
Then too there are the narratives that read as if Bidart’s flesh itself were sewn into them
based on the Egyptian god Seti I’s “Twelve Hours of the Night,” a sequence that will never see completion
any more than Pound’s Cantos or Williams’s Paterson
Reading the poems of Frank Bidart is like reading the Marquis de Sade through the lens of Ignatius Loyola and John of the Cross (or vice versa)
Reading these poems is like reading the Marquis de Sade through the lens of Ignatius Loyola and John of the Cross (or vice versa)
Here is a poem Bidart wrote at the age of 73
“Queer.” “Lie to yourself about this and you will/ forever lie about everything,” he writes
Bidart tells us he could never hope to find himself except in his poems
There’s something in these poems which bears out his claim
and knows—cannily—how white spaces and capital letters and pauses in lineation capture—enflesh—the heart itself
Sometimes his poems verge on a quiet hysteria in the shock of self-revelation
Then too there are the repetitions of phrases—lines or half lines—which he weaves into his poems over and over
he reminds us that his work—like Whitman’s
“you can create a structure that is large enough or strong enough
anything can retain its own identity and find its place” in the poem
Back in the 1970s a young Bidart transcribed and edited Robert Lowell’s History Sonnets
and this immersion finds its way into Bidart’s poems
Then too there is Bidart’s need to get down on the page not only his own deep fear of rejection
but the need to confess his love for others
One such work is his now un-coded poem for Joe Brainard
*Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified the poet in question as Paul Bidart
This article also appeared in print, under the headline “Tell Yourself the Truth,” in the March 18, 2019
Paul Mariani is a former poetry editor at America and University Professor of English emeritus at Boston College
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Frank Bidart '62 earned the award for his book "Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016"
who earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California
Bidart received the award for his 10th book
“Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016,” released in August 2017 by publisher Farrar
the career-spanning retrospective also earned Bidart the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry in November
the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry recognizes a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author
In an announcement about Bidart’s achievement
the Pulitzer Prize Board described “Half-light” as “a volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics
building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.”
Other 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners include The New York Times and The New Yorker for their combined breadth of reporting that exposed high-profile Hollywood sexual predators; Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for her feature-length GQ profile of mass murderer Dylann Roof; and New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz
Born in Bakersfield in 1939, Bidart said he first became interested in literature during his time at UCR, which he entered in 1957. In an interview with fellow poet Mark Halliday for a 1983 issue of the literary magazine Ploughshares
Bidart described his experience as an English major at UCR:
“The teacher I was closest to at Riverside was Tom Edwards,” Bidart said
‘The English Literary Tradition,’ was the place that I feel I first learned how to pay attention to the details of a poem
The importance of ‘voice’ and ‘tone of voice’ was at the heart of what I learned.”
Bidart enrolled in a graduate program at Harvard University
he joined the faculty of Wellesley College
where he continues to teach as a professor of English
Bidart published his first collection of poems
He is also the author of “The Book of the Body” (1977)
Bidart was previously nominated for the 1998
He follows in the footsteps of past Pulitzer Prize in Poetry recipients including Robert Frost
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Frank Bidart, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and professor of English, who joined the Wellesley faculty in 1972, has been shortlisted for the National Book Award in poetry for his 2017 collection, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965–2016
Bidart is considered one of the most significant American poets writing today
he was a protégé of the poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop
including creative writing workshops and seminars on modernist poetry
The Boston Globe
Half-Light is a monument to fearless interiority and le mot juste.” The article noted that
“Bidart read a carefully curated selection of his work to a rapt audience.” He delivered “Writing Ellen West,” a follow-up to one of his most acclaimed earlier poems
which was based on a well-known psychological study of a woman with an eating disorder
Bidart explained that his work is often about “the war between the mind and the body.”
Bidart told the Globe that he “may write another book or two
‘but I’m not going to write another 60 years.’ The work collected between the covers of Half-Light ‘is basically how I’m going to be understood
and how I have to understand myself as a writer,’ he said
The Globe said Bidart has greatly inspired his students
much as Lowell and Bishop inspired him as a young grad student
“For a time he taught courses at Brandeis University
where one of his students was the poet and novelist Ha Jin
Nausheen Eusuf ’02 waited for the book-signing line to subside so she could say hello to her former teacher
She went to Wellesley to study computer science
but one class with Bidart ‘changed everything.’ Fifteen years later
she’s about to publish her own first full-length book of poetry.”
Bidart told Daily Shot writers that he’s had marvelous students at Wellesley
both in creative writing and literature classes
“I’ve directed some moving and intensely memorable creative writing honors theses,” he said
“It’s a thrill to watch a student discover herself as a writer
whenever I teach a published poem that I know extremely well
It’s been a privilege for 45 years to be at Wellesley.”
Professor of English Dan Chiasson
he was already among the foremost American poets—one of the last great poets of the 20th century
capturing its marvels and horrors with ferocious personal power
he’s become one of the first great poets of the 21st century
I’ve watched with awe the majesty of each new poem and volume as it takes shape.”
Chiasson adds that Bidart is a treasured friend and colleague
as well as a great teacher: “He’s part of the air we breathe.”
The winners of the 2017 National Book Awards will be announced at a ceremony in New York on November 15
The title of Frank Bidart’s latest book, Metaphysical Dog
animating mismatch between our appetites and our understanding—the very things that sustain us
in a collection that races forward but stammers in the face of love’s insufficiency
though one that seemed eager to be anything but
his masters clean his teeth with dental floss
It’s a short poem—there are only three more lines after these—and Bidart doesn’t let the comic mood stand
and the weight of the entire poem lands on its final two words: “he writhed.” That two-syllable statement feels almost elemental
holding the writhing in a moment beyond change; the simple pronoun and past-tense verb have both a terrible finality and an ineradicable presence
serves as an introduction to a style that puts profound weight on individual words
Bidart has spent the better part of a lifetime finding the means to make generalities ring out—to embody the ways in which our lives get locked up in ideas
he uses everything from prosody to the caps lock key to infuse otherwise static abstractions with extraordinary force
often by halting the forward motion of a phrase
arrests the momentum crashing over the stanza break that immediately precedes it.)
because they set up a conflict that Bidart is forever renewing
Part of his genius over the years (this is his eighth collection
and he now claims a rightful place in the ranks of American masters) has been his ability to present the drama of that which cannot change
Having left behind the long poems that first made him famous
Bidart increasingly writes in knots—knots he doesn’t seek to untie but instead pulls tighter and tighter as he goes
In “Presage,” that knotted quality becomes a controlling metaphor
revising the same charged metaphor in language both intricate and plain
the poet pushes forward by pulling on the cords that tie him
Bidart’s tragic view of life is apparently untouched by our 21st-century sense that everything can be improved
and his assumption of suffering as the condition of life lends his poems an untimely authority—one that feels almost moral in its determined gaze
I sometimes wonder if his body of work doesn’t overstate the case
Bidart seems to take much of his bearing from the premise and practice of old-school psychoanalysis
endlessly rehearsing the narrative of the wound
proving its centrality by opening it again and again
But if that skewing is the price of having these poems
Bidart writes about his doubt with powerful conviction
these poems testify that art can alter life
not by changing its course but by rewarding an otherwise ineffectual desire to make life live up to the promise it’s forever making then snatching away
“The love I’ve known is the love of/ two people staring// not at each other
but in the same direction.” That love is no less present in his work these days
but its expression has been altered by a career spent in service to it
The book has an unmistakably valedictory tone; it’s at once more resigned and more open
more hurried in its need to see it all again
Bidart frequently returns to stories he recounted in earlier books—the loss of religion
coming out—but in Metaphysical Dog they’re more explicitly tied to his life as a writer
which adds a surprising layer of vulnerability
pulling those experiences out into a plainer light
Even as Bidart suggests the ways in which he needed to transform these events
the desire for survival will not// allow you ever to admit/ another so deeply in again.” The poem is already into its 14th line before it completes the sentence:
The poem quickly shifts into another of Bidart’s characteristically clearly written tangled metaphors of dogged desperation
calm compassion that feels like a reward for a lifetime suffering harm at the hands of his devotion—a result
of Bidart’s altered relationship to himself as a character
Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart
See all the pieces in this month’s Slate Book Review
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Frank Bidart, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at Wellesley, has won the National Book Award for poetry for his 2017 collection, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. It was announced in October that he was a finalist for the award
Several of Bidart’s works have been nominated for the National Book Award, and he’s also been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for his 2013 volume, Metaphysical Dog
“Anybody who steps into the world of Frank’s collected poems wants to remain there as long as possible,” said Professor of English Dan Chiasson
and devastation of his poems…and the path they cut through a cosmos not always welcoming or game to be understood
This award went to an artist operating in his 70s
at the frontier of what poetry can do in a world less and less accommodating to art of the highest caliber.”
Bidart received the award at a ceremony November 15 in New York hosted by actress
Bidart suggested that it was not just a life of poetry contained in his winning book
“I realized that I’m almost twice as old as any of the other finalists,” Bidart told the audience
“Writing the poems was how I survived…I hope that the journeys these poems go on will help others to survive as well.”
Winners of the National Book Awards receive $10,000 and a bronze sculpture
"The weight of Bidart's guilt and anguish is palpable — it seems to force itself up from the page at the reader
but so does his faith that art can make hardship not merely bearable
Media RelationsGreen Hall 337CWellesley College106 Central StreetWellesley
E-mail: mediarelations@wellesley.eduTel: 781.283.2373Fax: 781.283.3650Journalists: 781.283.3321
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A recently obtained arrest report details what led to the arrest of a Clark County School District employee late last year
was booked into the Clark County Detention Center for open and gross lewdness on Dec
after an incident occurred at Del Sol Academy
RELATED: CCSD police make arrest for open and gross lewdness
Students informed school administration they had observed Bidart
with a hand down his pants "doing a masturbation motion" while scrolling through his phone at his desk
One of the students told police they were "shocked" to see Bidart masturbating and informed them that they saw him doing these actions through his office window while they were walking backstage
Bidart initially told police he was having a problem with his zipper
he admitted to touching himself while looking at Instagram
but "it was a light squeeze" and didn't think anyone could see him
The 27-year-old also told police he "would not consider myself masturbating."
RELATED: Serious incidents involving Las Vegas valley schools in 2019-20
Authorities said Bidart was booked on the lewdness charge as he did touch himself in an office within a school that had large windows where four school-aged children did see
Bidart was placed on indefinite suspension in November 2019
per the negotiated terms with his bargaining unit
Bidart was hired by CCSD back in April 2017
Report a typo
Food Poisoning Outbreaks and Litigation: Surveillance and Analysis
CDC collaborated with public health officials in several states and with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate an outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections (listeriosis)
Joint investigation efforts indicated that commercially produced
prepackaged caramel apples made from Bidart Bros
apples were the likely source of this outbreak
The 35 ill people included in this outbreak investigation were reported from 12 states: Arizona (5)
Illness onset dates ranged from October 17
Eleven illnesses were associated with a pregnancy (occurred in a pregnant woman or her newborn infant)
Among people whose illnesses were not associated with a pregnancy
Three invasive illnesses (meningitis) occurred among otherwise healthy children aged 5–15 years
and listeriosis contributed to at least three of the seven deaths reported
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) identified two cases of listeriosis in Canada with the same PFGE patterns as those seen in the U.S
More detailed testing using WGS showed that the isolate from only one of the two cases was genetically related to the U.S
That person reported eating a caramel apple
On January 6, 2015, Bidart Bros. of Bakersfield, California, voluntarily recalled Granny Smith and Gala apples because environmental testing revealed contamination with Listeria monocytogenes at the firm’s apple-packing facility
The recall included all Granny Smith and Gala apples shipped from its Shafter
FDA laboratory analyses using PFGE showed that environmental Listeria isolates from the Bidart Bros
facility were indistinguishable from the outbreak strains
WGS found that these isolates were highly related to the outbreak strains
WGS showed that Listeria isolates from whole apples produced by Bidart Bros.
also were highly related to the outbreak strains
Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm, is the nation’s leading law firm representing victims of Listeria outbreaks. The Listeria lawyers of Marler Clark have represented thousands of victims of Listeria and other foodborne illness outbreaks and have recovered over $600 million for clients
Marler Clark is the only law firm in the nation with a practice focused exclusively on foodborne illness litigation
Our Listeria lawyers have litigated Listeria cases stemming from outbreaks traced to a variety of foods
earned a BA in philosophy from Seattle University
and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison
He graduated from both schools with high honors
and won numerous awards for service and academic excellence
Denis worked as one of the lead attorneys on the defense team that represented Jack in the Box against the hundreds of claims and lawsuits arising from the historic 1993 E
he obtained extensive knowledge of the meat and foodservice industry
He is a frequent speaker and writer on issues related to food safety law
The nation’s foremost law firm with a practice dedicated to representing victims of foodborne illness
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Who in California doesn’t know Basque lawyer
their two children and grandchildren care for and practice the Basque heritage that they received from their ancestors
from Navarre on both sides. Professionally
Ricardo Echeverria are respected professionals who enjoy renown in their profession. Both have just been named “Super Lawyers” for 2018.
Los Angeles, CA. Both California lawyers, Michael J. Bidart and Ricardo Echeverria, are members of the same Southern California practice, Shernoff Bidart Echeverria
and have both been named among the 100 best “super lawyers,” in Southern California this year. Mike Bidart
has also been included in the list of the top 10 super lawyers
as indicated in a note from their law firm’s website
It is worth adding that there are nearly 170,000 practicing lawyers in the state of California
some of them of great national and international prestige
who are also members of recognized cabinets and firms of national and world projection
Bidart is “the Managing Partner for the firm
and lead the firm’s HMO Litigation and Property/Casualty Departments. He has developed the firm’s health insurance practice by successfully prosecuting bad faith disputes against insurers and HMOs. He has been named to the list of Super Lawyers by Law & Politics magazine since 2004
and has also been a Super Lawyer Top 100 Attorney every year since 2004,” according to the firm’s website
Ricardo Echeverria is a trial attorney with the firm
where he handles both insurance and bad Faith and catastrophic personal injury cases
He is also currently the President of the Association of Consumer Attorneys of Los angles
the largest association of this type in the US. In 2017
named him one of the 100 Top Attorneys in California. After being named
as a “Rising Star,” he has been named a Super Lawyer every year since 2005
Food Safety News noted other safety hazards from the FDA's report
"a damaged conveyor belt with chipping and peeling paint on the transfer chute on the Granny’s Best packaging line
and green vinyl-coated padding lining the transfer chute to the peeler had frayed edges and exposed foam-like material."
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There will be a concert this Sunday in Bidarrai by California Basque Andrea Bidart Oteiza
in the heart of a family originally from Navarre
told EuskalKultura.com that she is especially happy and excited for the recital. “It will be a very special concert for me because my maternal great grandparents were from Bidarrai,” she said
Andrea Miren Bidart was born in Chino, California the daughter of Mike and Jeanette (Bicary) Bidart. She grew up in the presence and care of the Basque culture, and especially surrounded by song. Andrea is one of the three members of the Basque-Californian group, Noka and has also recorded on her own. Last year, she recorded Bidart Aita-Alabak
a collection of Basque songs that she grew up with
and continue to be part of the “hit parade” at gatherings of friends and family at the Bidart residence
July 14th at 5pm in Bidarrai accompanied by Mikel Markez on the guitar and vocals
and Julen Alonso on the trikitixa. Don’t miss out
Renowned poet to read at Washington University March 24 and 31
Bidart’s many honors include the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation Writer’s Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Morton Dauwen Zabel Award; and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award
he was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
He teaches at Wellesley College in Massachusetts
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LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — The Clark County School District Police Department arrested 27-year-old Matthew Bidart on Dec
This incident does not appear to involve contact with students
The arrest stems from an investigation that was initiated at Del Sol Academy of the Performing Arts in November 2019
"An allegation was made against a staff member for some inappropriate activity on campus
It was made by a student to school police," said Bryan Zink
Public Information Officer for CCSD Police
"In most cases when we have a complaint against a staff member for the inappropriate activity it is dealt with as quickly as possible," Zink said
Bidart has been working for CCSD since April 2017
Bidart was booked into the Clark County Detention Center
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