Frank Leon Bidart, Jr., was born in 1939 in Bakersfield, California, where he grew up, in his words, “obsessed with his parents.” After he was graduated from the University of California, Riverside, he attended graduate school at Harvard University. He formed a close relationship with poet Robert Lowell while residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and soon after began to write poetry with a style and content distinctive from those of his illustrious mentor. In 1972, Bidart accepted a position at Wellesley College, later becoming Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English. Presented in partnership with National Poetry Month and O, Miami.