Frank Bidart, a three-time Pulitzer Prize poetry finalist from Bakersfield, California, recalls The Grapes of Wrath in a poem about Donald Trump’s America published this week by The New Yorker. James Franco, Bidart’s fellow Californian and Steinbeck aficionado, adapted Bidart’s poem Herbert White for a 2010 film starring Michael Shannon, Franco’s co-star in The Broken Tower, Franco’s Hart Crane bio-pic. Read “Mourning What We Thought We Were” and listen to Frank Bidart recite lines that will resonate with readers of The Grapes of Wrath who share the poet’s anger about the past and his anxiety about the future.
Photo by Bill Ray from the collection of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
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