Frank Bidart

When I began this poem,
                                    to see myself
as a piece of history, having a past
which shapes, and informs, and thus inevitably   
limits—
          at first this seemed sufficient, the beginning of   
freedom ...
                  The way to approach freedom
was to acknowledge necessity:—   
I sensed I had to become not merely
a speaker, the “eye,” but a character ...

Frank Bidart