With a review of Frank Bidart's Des...

With a review of Frank Bidart's Desire

Snow outside, heavy snow, the kind that falls straight down. It plasters itself noiselessly onto the highway flocks the top of tree branches, and wipes away the contours of edge-stones and fenceposts and garbage cans - a laundry all whites, pre-sorted, each muffled thing in its place. With little patent motion: across our city traffic must be at a crawl. Winter is no analogy for the emotional life. Snow filters in consequence of itself to make little drifts. Its motion takes the form of scantest shiftings. level at their most static, emotions are quicker,