Interviewer
Tu Fu is a kind of reporter.
Frank Bidart
Exactly. There’s always a pane of glass between you and what you desire. We live in a world where we are surrounded by people who tell us you can break the pane of glass if you do one thing or another: if you believe in psychoanalysis, Scientology or Marx. They all say there’s a way to break the pane of glass, and the poems clearly do not find a way to break the pane of glass.
Interviewer
What I’ve always related to so much in your work is the notion that the poems are a kind of fog on the glass, so you can see it.
Bidart
To be able to describe that structure is itself a way to get beyond the pane of glass, not just to be at its mercy.
–Frank Bidart
from Tin House Review, Summer 2008
