The Life of a Poet: Mary Jo Bang

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>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> First I should just say that, directly outside, if you've been here for the last two hours, there's like a lot of ambulance and police activity. So, there may be continued sirens that you will hear. That's just part of the Hill Center experience. Anyway, welcome to the [Inaudible] Life of a Poet where we are celebrating the work of Mary Jo Bang. The Life of a Poet is one of our just most precious programs here at Hill Center. It is the partnership of the Library of Congress, the Washington Post, and it's a real treasure in this city. And, I could not, we could not do this without Rob Casper and Ron Charles. Ron, as I'm sure you all know, has contributed book credit but he is also the editor of the Washington Post Book World and is our moderator and is just is exceptional at what he does. And, Rob Casper actually makes the program possible. He [inaudible] curates the series. Rob is the, to make sure I get this absolutely right, Head of the Poetry and Literature Center of the Library of Congress. And, I'm going to let him introduce [inaudible]. [ Applause ] >> Rob Casper: Hey everybody. Can you hear me? Thanks for coming out. We're thrilled to have Mary Jo here. And, [inaudible], hopefully stays throughout the conversation. Thanks to Mary Ann and to the Hill Center for making this very possible. I also want to say thanks to the host who is Ron Charles. This is actually the 12th program in this series. And, I'm thrilled to see Ron become more and more of a champion and expert in, whether he believes it or not, our poetry. Before I talk about tonight's event and introduce Mary Jo, let me say a little bit about the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. We are home to the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry and we put on programs of this throughout the year. We mostly do that at the library just down the street. And, if you want to come [inaudible]. Okay. If you want to check out those programs, you can go to our website, www.loc.gov/poetry and find out more. We also handed out surveys for you. We do surveys at all our programs to get a sense of how successful our programs our, to get suggestions of how to do more programs, and to find out where you heard about this program. So, if you wouldn't mind filling it out, you can leave it on your chair, you can hand it to me, you can give it to the gods and we'll find it and [inaudible]. Here we go. Now, I'd like to introduce Mary Jo Bang [inaudible] our 2016 spring season. Mary Jo's the author of seven poetry collections, most recently the Last Two Seconds. Her others include Elegy which received the 2007 National Critics Circle Award and was the 2008 New York Times Notable Book and Apology for Want, awarded the 1996 Bakeless Prize and the 1998 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer's Award. In 2010, Mary Jo also published a translation of Dante's Inferno which is a notable book about American Library Association. She's received the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Berlin as well as Fellowships from Guggenheim and Bellagio Foundations. So, Poetry Coeditor at the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005, Mary Jo is a professor of English at Washington University in Saint Louis, actually, where Ron Charles did his graduate work. On a personal note, I have far too many stories to tell about Mary Jo to fit into my introduction. So, let me stick with the beginning. Fifteen years ago, when I moved to Brooklyn, I fell in with my then girlfriend's social circle of poets. [Inaudible] for the Midwest though, and my sweetheart described her as a friend who had a heavy, brainy, playful and profound conversationalist, a conversation that would be as far reaching in such a standing as I can imagine. I did, eventually, meet Mary Jo and have just such a back and forth. But, I did not imagine then that it would continue with brief interruptions of time and space and with her singular slant take on just about everything so gloriously informed by her thinking. What I think now of Mary Jo's work, I think in these terms and include the quote gorgeous phrasing in matters that leaps, unquote, what the Washington Post described, in their large Best New Poetry Books review of the Last Two Seconds. I'm so grateful that we have the next hour plus to listen in while my friend and confidant gets the chance to experience the magic of this ongoing conversation. Please join me in welcoming Ron Charles and Mary Jo Bang. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: I'm so glad you're here. Thank you very much for coming. >> Mary Jo Bang: Thank you for inviting me and thanks to the Hill Center, to Mary Ann and to my friend Rob whose introduction was extremely kind. >> Ron Charles: You didn't start your life as a poet, your professional life. You started as a physician's assistant. >> Mary Jo Bang: I started as a baby. [ Laughter ] >> Ron Charles: It's going to be one of those hours! >> Mary Jo Bang: But yes. In fact, I did graduate work in sociology. I then trained in the order of these things. >> Ron Charles: Yeah but you worked as a photographer. So, I knew that. >> Mary Jo Bang: That's right. >> Ron Charles: But, it was the physician's assistant that caught me off guard. I started to think what did that teach you about looking, about listening? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, try looking at a microscope slide. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: That teaches you, or Grey's Anatomy. I mean, I think that a lot of people have asked me that question about how did these various occupations inform poetry. But, I think it more has to do with the things that drew me, the subjects to which I was drawn. So, I'm drawn to things where there's a kind of exactitude. And so, photography is one of those things, particularly in the old days when you had to set the, you know the aperture or shutter speed and you [inaudible] what kind of film you had and then you would go to the dark room. And then, you would time the exposure and how long you would keep it in that chemical bath. And, all these things, I obviously have a compulsive personality, and that served me well. And the same was true of medicine. You have to be, to be a good practitioner, it pays obsessively attentive to [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: In one of your poems you write, called Open Heart Surgery, I watched while one man's heart filled the hand of another. I noted the inviolate pulsing, envied the sheer tenacity. You feel that. You saw that yourself? >> Mary Jo Bang: I did. For a while, as a PA, I assisted a group of open heart surgeons. And, I didn't, I wasn't the surgical assistant, but, I'd go into the OR when they were doing the procedure and I would give them updates on the clinic schedule or whatever was upcoming and I was an observer. And, indeed, there was a heart in the hand. >> Ron Charles: It's something hardly anyone sees. >> Mary Jo Bang: Exactly and more than I ever dreamed of seeing. But, there was, and it kept beating. So yes, it becomes a metaphor for tenacity. But, there's the literal and there's the figurative. And, it works both ways. >> Ron Charles: When did you start to conceive of yourself as a poet? >> Mary Jo Bang: Maybe tomorrow. >> Ron Charles: Two Seconds from now? >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Mary Jo Bang: The Last Two Seconds. >> Ron Charles: Was this a career your parents would have suggest or? >> Mary Jo Bang: No. >> Ron Charles: Thought of for you? >> Mary Jo Bang: No, no. In fact, my mother made me take typing. >> Ron Charles: That has been handy though. >> Mary Jo Bang: It has indeed. But, it was because she wanted me to be a secretary instead of a waitress. >> Ron Charles: Ambitious. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. She was. And, I'm really glad that I took that typing class. >> Ron Charles: In one of your poems, you write I've been a coward most of my life. And then another one, if only the terror of the next step were not so absorbing, we might see more. What do fear and perception have to do with each other and with poetry? There's a lot of terror and fear in your poems. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes, there is. I think that has to do with being human being and not a poet per say. But, when one becomes a poet the page becomes a place where you play out your preoccupations and your obsessions. And so, those subjects find you, you don't necessarily go looking for those subjects. But, within that social space of the page, you are talking to others who might, in fact, experience the world the same way, and those become your readers. So, that's how it has to do with poetry is through talking. >> Ron Charles: And confessing your own cowardliness. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah, yeah. >> Ron Charles: Finds a response in all of us. >> Mary Jo Bang: Exactly. >> Ron Charles: Yes. What did draw you to photography? You wrote in one-line image is invincible, defies gravity, gets away with the breathless ajar, image is invincible, defies gravity, gets away with the breathless life of ajar. What did, what excited you about photography? >> Mary Jo Bang: That's a hard question. I think looking has been a part of my life from the very beginning. I grew up in very modest circumstances, what you call working class, and I didn't have a lot of stimulation. We didn't have books in our house, we didn't have paintings. We had television of course. But, when I'd go outside, I would see things and I was charmed, I think, by say the leaves or the different colors of leaves. And, I followed my older sister, who's older by three years, around. And, that opened up a world to me because she could go further than I could go. And, I think that I was entranced by everything I saw. And, I would see little flowers, clovers, all those kinds of things. And, I think it was a relief from both interior working and a very boring kind of interior life inside the house. >> Ron Charles: Agreed upon, so High Art. This is from your, we'll talk about what this books about later. >> Mary Jo Bang: And you know there's a movie right. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: Called High Art. So that this movie, this poem's in dialogue with this film. High art, there's a city outside the mind, another inside, a mind full of something becoming because, a face too small for this red mouth look how the line isn't a street anymore but a track. Like that. The graveled shroud of a train. I'm not usually like this. A linkable Like arrives without its What. Parks the car. I remember the camera, The clear click. The clean cutting off of the instant. Good-bye, good-bye. The slide in the sleeve. This opening eye. Wanting to take everything in, sequence after sequence. The framed now that never ends ending; the blue suit pulled from a pool of aqua dreaming. Not knowing why aside from theory. Sexual, sexual configurations of glamour. What is the scene? What is the cover? The frozen waiting for focus and drive. Look, look, look. Art is what looking takes you to. A red mouth opening to say, Don't look away. I'm not usually like this. The camera sliding by with its aperture open. Form, repetition, constructs, content, it happens. Here is the needle that speeds the plot to the ambush. It happens. The Whole Truth shading desire. Atmospherics predominating over drama. Chiaroscuro focused on a point of desperation. The recurrent dream of a catalog of surprise revelations. Having makes wanting continue a darkness both familiar and strange. What have you got there? A translation of a story of a dream world. The sequence of events exist. Here one; here two; here buckle; here shoe. Now let there be sound. Now let there be light. Once there was this now. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: And I love the way this phone talks about the camera. I remember the camera, the click, the clean cutting off of the instant, goodbye, goodbye. Talk about that. What are you saying goodbye to? >> Mary Jo Bang: You know, [inaudible] talks about the frozen moment. And, I think that there is both a kind of tragedy in that because we freeze the moment and then it's over. But, there's also this continuation of it because we have it and we think we can hold onto it. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And, there is a kind of consolation in that. But, it also goes back and forth, so, seesaw between the tragic and the re-embracing [inaudible]. So, I think that, if you know this film, which is about a drug addict and about a woman who wants to be a photographer and a woman who was a photographer and so that there's all of this and there's a lot of sexual desire going on between all of these characters, that the powerful kind of bedrock behind all of that is desire and how seeing both triggers the desire, satisfies desire, but, it's an intimate part of it. So, and of course, desire, at it's worse, is addiction. And so, there's an extremity, when you think about addiction. But, desire is kind of the positive part of that, is we start out wanting something and we end up needing it. >> Ron Charles: Yes, yes. Talking about another poem, this is called A Screen Door Slams. [ Background noise ] >> Mary Jo Bang: This is in my first book, I should say. A screen door slams. We leave my brother's red toy tractor parked on the scorched lawn, climb the hill, peer through the brush at the forbidden: railroad tracks and hobo jungle. We lose sight of the ravine, the fat black snake that falls to the bottom of every yard. It's Friday night fish-fry at the Fire Department. Grown-ups drink beer from tiny metal buckets. My sister pulls a tin fish from a metal washtub. Off to one side, a girl with Down's Syndrome, six years old, lists in a wheelchair. The mother's gay hair is drawn away from her tight, misfortuned face. She bends over the daughter, murmuring into a lap of robe, wiping a drool. Rolling head, slack jaw, protruding tongue, an immaculate blue dress, pristine collar edged with a row of white lace. Don't stare, my mother says. And I the same age, air tinged with the scent of fish and Crisco, press my face into the ironed-cotton smell of my mother's skirt, whisper, I wasn't. >> Ron Charles: Yes you were. >> Mary Jo Bang: Obviously. >> Ron Charles: Yes. You were so looking. Everything in that poem is so alive. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, and it's also desired. I want that dress that that little girl has on. >> Ron Charles: All the colors of the poem explode. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. I want that pristine white collar. And, you know, the difference between her and me is it's [inaudible] and I would probably have on rags, because I'm the little, you know, poor little girl. So, it's all about looking as a poem designer. >> Ron Charles: Yes. In one of your poems, you say, can replication ever be pure? Can't replication ever be pure? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, no, we go to [inaudible], this is not a pipe, you know, and the painting of the pipe, where, underneath it in French is written the translation, this is not a pipe. And, it's playing with the idea that this is not a pipe because it's a representation of a pipe. But, of course, when we look at a picture of a pipe, we think that's a pipe. So, there's all kinds of layers in that. And so, yeah, the replication is never pure because it can't be, there's only this moment and then the moment's gone. >> Ron Charles: This is one of the tensions your poems constantly play with. >> Mary Jo Bang: It's true. >> Ron Charles: The Renunciation of Dreams and Such, another poem from your first book. >> Mary Jo Bang: Renunciation of Dreams and Such. The night you wandered in the wrong direction and woke up among strand bedfellows odd man out in houndstooth blazer and khaki pants, you called me for advice but I had none to give. That night I dreamed: a shower, a rat, an idle knife. There is no sense subjecting dreams to light: the truth is they live underwater and even there give only a passing glimpse of what we need. Last night I dreamed of macaroons, those small delectables. I tried one but found it overmuch, returned it to its silver plate where a rim of tortured dogwood, branch and unfelled bloom, held the cakes in place. I once loved a man who studied the quiet splendor of cut glass tinted pink with rose, amber with Grand Marnier. In those days, I didn't dream. Not even the night a hurricane unsuckeled trees and laid them side by side. January that year began and ended as a wave of gray intensity that converted the world to ice and froze water where it hid behind the wall. In the realm of hard, cold and done for, it's best to rely on nothing but touch and temperature in a system where zero stands for the treason of warmth. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: As I was preparing for this, I thought these people are never going to go follow these poems because they're too difficult, they're not going to be able to understand them. But, the way you read them, they really come alive. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well thank you. >> Ron Charles: You're a superb reader of your own work. The poem is a by saying it's best to rely on nothing but touch. You don't believe that. >> Mary Jo Bang: Obviously, everything's a metaphor. So, to rely on touch and temperature, you could say why you touched something to see if it's warm or cold. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And you could say that's a metaphor for a relationship. You touch the other person and find whether they're warm or cold to you. >> Ron Charles: You're much more visual and tactile in your poems. Don't you think? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, I don't know how tactile I am. I know I'm very visual. >> Ron Charles: Okay. Your second book Louise in Love, it's remarkable, if I recall a novella in lyrics, people struggle trying to describe this book because there's nothing like this. It's about a silent film star. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well no. It's about a character named Louise. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Mary Jo Bang: And she happens to look like Louise Brooks. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Mary Jo Bang: The silent film star. >> Ron Charles: Who's on the cover. >> Mary Jo Bang: That's right. And she shares some biographical details. >> Ron Charles. Okay, okay I'll go along with that. And, how'd this book come about? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, it came about because there was a new, I was living in New York and it was the early 90s. And there was this brand new coffee shop that everybody was talking about. And, it was adorable. And, it had these little tables and little chairs. And, as soon as it open, I went there. And, my intent was to sit there and write. It was called Starbucks. >> Ron Charles: Did you buy stock in this little store? >> Mary Jo Bang: Unfortunately, not. But, sitting there at a table, there were two empty chairs and there was the chair in which I was sitting. And, I had this idea to create imaginary friends. And I did. And, one was named Louise and one was a man named Ham, which was short for Hamilton, and he was British. And then, I thought okay then, who am I? and, I couldn't decide. I might be another man and we'd be buying for Louise's attention. I might be another woman and I might be buying for Ham's attention or for Louise's attention. And, I thought, well, why don't we just settle that I'm the other. And there's always that sense, in a relationship, that there is an other even if the other is the blood. So, I then had a character sitting in my chair called the other. And, all these people talked to each other and I made a poem out of it. And, it was so much fun, the next day I came back again and wrote two more poems. And then, I showed them to a friend. And, the friend said, those are fun let's, you know, keep having fun. And, I said would you like to know what Louise looks like? And, I held up a shoebox in which I kept different [inaudible] from the years when I lived in London. And, I knew what this woman looked like, and it was that card. And so, I went to the shoebox and got this. And, I looked at the back because I didn't know who the woman was. And, and it said Louise Brooks. And, I had already named my character Louise. And so, I thought, this is Louise Brooks. And, I thought I think she's a film star, no I think she's a writer, no film star, no writer. So, the next day I went to the library and, of course, she was a silent film star who wrote a book called Lulu in Hollywood. And so, I took out her biography and Lulu in Hollywood and I aligned them for details, and. >> Ron Charles: That is surprising. So, it really was you backed into this. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. So, she's, Louise is her own person but she probably, and I wanted to experiment with creating a character the way that novelists do. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And this allowed me to do it. And, I wanted the character to be not me. So, she's not me in many dramatic ways. She's an alcoholic, she's promiscuous, she, you know, is kind of devil may care. >> Ron Charles: Lives decades earlier. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well no because my didn't, so. >> Ron Charles: When does this take place. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, anytime in the United Nations. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Mary Jo Bang: But, I became jealous because I couldn't get in the poems. So, I had to invent somebody else and it's her sister and her name's Lidia. And so then, I could put my own personality into Lidia's personality. >> Ron Charles: That's fascinating. That's a great introduction. This is, we can only read a couple of these so I just picked two that spoke to me on this slide here. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, I'll just add something, that, while I was writing some of these, I was taking a course, I had a fellowship at Princeton. And, I all I had to do was live in Princeton. But I needed some structure in my life. So, I sat in on a course that was being offered on late romantic poets. And so, there is a line in here. No, I'm sorry this is not the one, I thought this was going to have a line in here from Keats. But, it doesn't. Instead the line in here is from Mrs. Dalloway. Sorry. That Was All, Louise Said, Except For. The dalliance of spring-boards, the lingering impression of an off-black blouse. Facts, said Ham, too often confide an edifice with no hint of what hides behind. They had just come from seeing the clairvoyant. She told them that like Clint Eastwood, Louise had been born on an eclipse. Since her moon was in Sagittarius, she could live in a foreign country if ever she chose. In the cafe, the service was slow; the waitress had taken up smoking and a bald man was asking for more. Across the street, a building stood facing its final demise. A mud-spattered window in a double-hung door was all that divided outside from in. to Louise, the conversation seemed all too familiar. I feel, she said to the other, like a sheet grown soft with the deadweight of difficult sleep. She turned her head, she was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth. What you are, said Ham, is beauty. Empty she said. No inbreath, no eyeblink. So, you see, Clint Eastwood was proof [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: Definitely more contemporary. >> Mary Jo Bang: And then you wanted me -- >> Ron Charles: I did, there's another one. >> Mary Jo Bang: Okay. This one's hard, I just have to see where it goes. Okay. Etched, Tetched, Touched. It was perhaps Hollandish. A tinted print of functional waterway tearing a town apart. Aproned ladies and ladies in breeches. A dog baited by a strip of bacon. Louise didn't care for such scenes. Static antics, she said. Sterile takes on quotidian twilight. Give me rapture and bliss, she told Ham. Hieronymus Bosch and Mister S. Dali, her sister Lydia claimed to have seen the latter her second summer in Montmartre. The epiphany of Yves Tanguy walking a panther seaside in Cannes. Such sights call up the shades, Louise said. Only they know how to last. Meaning, forever. All else shifts the way the print has now tilted with no one near. Ham crossed the carpet to right it. Of course, Louise too could be a pretty picture: a woman riveted to earth in raiments right for the season, hilarity on her face, the boat balanced behind her. From another angle, a perilous island of plenty volcanic, tigers hidden in treetops, leopards masking the faces of mountains, an irresistible silence on the edge of ruin, warm at the wrist. >> Ron Charles: What fascinated me about that poem, was, you got her looking at all these images and then becoming conscious of herself as an image. And how. >> Mary Jo Bang: How does that work? >> Ron Charles: Yeah, how mysterious that is because we. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well it is. And, it's third person. So, I think that the person commenting, Louise too could be a pretty picture, is the omniscient narrator judging Louise by her behavior. I thought that Louise would describe herself as being on the edge of a ruin. She doesn't have a lot of self-awareness. So, she gets into a ruin without knowing. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Did you ever write any short stories? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, that's how I began, wanting to be a fiction writer. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And, I couldn't quite manage it. Every time I would write a story and I have a writing group and I would submit the story and people would point out the shortcomings. And I immediately saw them but I didn't know how to correct them. That was all, I had written, that was the all the inspiration and I couldn't revisit it. But, when I began to write poems, someone could point out something that might not be working and I would have six or seven other ideas. And, I'd just have to decide between one of them. >> Ron Charles: That makes no sense to me at all. >> Mary Jo Bang: No, nor to me, it's a great illustration. So, this is my term, my revisiting, the idea can I learn something now from my character. >> Ron Charles: Can you write narrative; can you write a story of sorts? >> Mary Jo Bang: Right, right. Just, I didn't try the narrative, just the characters. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Mary Jo Bang: And then yeah. >> Ron Charles: There's a story though. These are moments, but they pile up. >> Mary Jo Bang: Right. If you have a character around long enough. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: It coheres. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: To an extent. But that's why it's a first novel instead of poems. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: You wrote a book called the Eye Like a Strange Balloon. >> Mary Jo Bang: I did. >> Ron Charles: I can't say that. >> Mary Jo Bang: It'll [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: Yes. It's a collection of poems inspired by paintings, films and photographs. How would you describe that book's dependence on those films, photos, and photographs? >> Mary Jo Bang: Right. Well, the artwork acts as a trigger. And, for the most part, the speaker then is in whatever scene is there. So, if there's a day at the beach, [inaudible] day at the beach, which is not in there, but you would, the speaker then would be at the beach and would speak out of that setting. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: So they became stage settings. But, sometimes they were abstract. And then, I would look at them the way you look at a cow and see a lion or giraffe. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: I would use those particulars to suggest a narrative instead of having full blown stage scene. >> Ron Charles: Some of them are quite famous others I thought were pure. >> Mary Jo Bang: That's right. >> Ron Charles: None of them appears in the book. >> Mary Jo Bang: No. That would be very expensive. >> Ron Charles: Yes. Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: Plus, it would limit the reading. >> Ron Charles: Now tell me about that, why that? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well because then it, you'd look at the. >> Ron Charles: If you were able to look, why can't we? >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, you can. And, most of them are online. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Mary Jo Bang: So, or, all of them, I'm sure, are in catalogs or they're films you could see. But, the, I didn't want people to look at the painting and say what I don't see that, because, of course, they wouldn't see that. Only I see that. But, that, it's just a trigger. >> Ron Charles: Okay. Here's one called the Bridge. >> Mary Jo Bang: The Bridge or Ophelia. She should have brought a book to read, a trim volume, a novella, a stack of stunned swallows pressed into paragraphs on nifty rice-paper pages. Instead, she was left watching a man feed a silver coin to an open-mouthed meter. She had ordered pasta with pesto and waited. There had been pee smell in the subway apse, ankle straps on a pair of patent pumps. On that particular Tuesday, she couldn't take her eyes off the wonderful wool in the window opposite a bleached blue so light it might as well not be blue but for picking up a whisp of a slant sky hue and holding it. Someone had been unkind last night. Someone had said, get thee and Get thee. Clearly she had mistaken fire for some galling ember. Will he ever come again? No never. Rue for you, rue for me. The small street ended in a cul-de-sac beneath the bridge. Above, the noise of some ecstatic blastment, a battalion of Comemycoach and Goodnightladies. This mixed with the softish, silken swish of an overhead fan. In a rotting wooden box, Parma violets grew heavy in scent. Hey nonny no. a group of fresh-faced acolytes from the Convent of the Sacred Heart passed in front of the glass. A faint breeze, a rippling, shadow. Her eye caught the corner of the Queen's orchid cape as it swept by. A fountain threw its dilly drops of water down. Will he never come again? Yes, never. Against that backscrape of sound and the hue of illusion of the vegetable glass of nature and of lush grass, the hair of graves, and of some hinted and heaven-weft scent, dressed in black taffeta, the daffodil waited. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: Now, what's the difference for the reader who knows the Victor Burgin photograph and the reader who doesn't? >> Mary Jo Bang: I don't think that, in that case it matters because we have Ophelia. And so, we have all of those views of Ophelia lying in the water holding her little violets. And, even if we don't have that image, we have the play. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And so, the bridge or Ophelia and we have some of the language of Ophelia, and so, and we have that sense of get thee to a nunnery and we have this rejection, the speaker's been rejected. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: By someone who will not come back. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And Ophelia won't come back. And so, there's this layering of the beloved being told to get thee away. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: The beloved being gone and the compilation between being told to go away and going away. So, it's a language game as all poems do. And the game privilege of having a language which creates sound and the, it exploits the ability of language to mean more than one thing. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And so, I double exploit that sometimes in my work. >> Ron Charles: Yes. All poems are connected to other art forms and other poems and other images but. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well there's that. >> Ron Charles: This poem is more easier to make those lines, I guess. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. If that's the level, we want to stay at of making those connections. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: But there's something else going on that goes on in the play as well which is subjectivity. And, there is [inaudible]. And so, that's there for anyone who's never seen the play. >> Ron Charles: Yes. I do think it's much richer if you know the play. >> Mary Jo Bang: Indeed. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And it's meant to be yeah. >> Ron Charles: And if you know, you can't see this of course, but, this is the [inaudible] it's the Golden Gate Bridge, Ophelia, you know, what does it remind you of, Ophelia's who's beloved is there, dead. And then you've got, you know, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo also going on. I mean all kinds of things are going on in this poem. Let's do another one that's even more abstract, Mickey Mouse. Minnie, not Mickey. Minnie Mouse. >> Mary Jo Bang: Minnie Mouse. But would you love me just as much if I had nothing at all? Sure, Minnie more than ever. Of course, love is a malleable matter of culture. And a wife is a wife. And what about number eight? Do you too see the world as formal decisions, technique and touch? The frenetic as typical of lines formed quote with sticks or the end of the paintbrush suggesting the primacy of the drawn or painted mark unquote. If you do, we'll still be friends. Theory reduces all that to a sentence. A picture is little more than its parts plus the marriage of time to its nothing, less now. I'm trying to think past the edge of my own rickrack slip. On the hill are three trees. Let's pretend it's a picture illustrating the notion that beauty is a bridge trembling under today. The insane questions that one cannot solve. The sleuthounds bark, horns fanfare the familiar. The herald announces the weather is rainy, a drizzle conceals the castle. A cut ribbon divides the beginning from some already ever after. I'm after proof that I am more than what can be dismantled into small bits of ideas, then pressed and rebuilt as the essence of innocence. Now, I have to tell you. I've never read this out loud. And the reason is that I do think it's very challenging when you can't see it on the page. So, if I were in the performance of my work, I usually pick things that have more of a through line. This has many concerns here, there's concerns about innocence and Minnie Mouse as a signifier of innocence, has to do with museums and wall plaques which is where that quote comes from and all kinds of other things. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. It's an amazing poem. And it's not, it's, back up here, it's inspired by De Kooning. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes, it's a De Kooning's painting of Minnie Mouse. >> Ron Charles: De Kooning's painting of Minnie Mouse. >> Mary Jo Bang: Actually, I saw, at the national gallery, here at Washington DC. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: On a trip to Washington DC. So, it's odd that I'm reading that here. >> Ron Charles: So, De Kooning's impression of Walt Disney's drawing of Minnie Mouse and his layering of tremendous transformations. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, and his whole thing about women as well, this man thing [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: De Kooning now. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah De Kooning. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And reducing women to only some of their parts. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: Which are the genitals [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: Right, the violent. >> Mary Jo Bang: Dismantling. >> Ron Charles: Dismantling. And then Disney, of course, does his own violence to women and his own. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. Yes. You should see those early cartoons Steamboat Willy and how poor Minnie is treated. >> Ron Charles: Or the mother's always killed off, all that. And then, and then this passage from a catalogue from the Milwaukee Art Museum. There are many things in here that any particular reader would be hard-pressed to know listening to this poem. >> Mary Jo Bang: Right. Yes. >> Ron Charles: Defend yourself. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, again, there are lots of things for lots of people. >> Ron Charles: Yep. >> Mary Jo Bang: And some people will be drawn to interpret the comments another way. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: Some about Mickey Mouse, some about art, some about the relationship of the theory to the real. Some are drawn to a speaker who doesn't exist on reducing an argument to a single linear statement and breaking it up over line breaks but is eager to do some of the work knowing that they will, perhaps, come to different conclusions. >> Ron Charles: And that it'll pay off. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Because there's so much there. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah, hopefully it will. And if not, you're not the reader for that poem. That's, and I don't mind that as well. I'm really very, I'm a pluralist, I'm, there are many kinds of poetry. >> Ron Charles: You wrote a book called the Bride of E which is a [inaudible] special concedes the poems follow along the alphabet. >> Mary Jo Bang: That's right. >> Ron Charles: How did, this is a, what is it? >> Mary Jo Bang: Opposite [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: Thank you for not making me try to say that. That, of course, [inaudible] of poems was that constraining or freeing or how did you relate to that? >> Mary Jo Bang: It is very freeing because there's, I don't remember who first said it, but, someone used the [inaudible] staring at the blank page. And, it's really accurate because you sit there and what are you going to write. So the alphabet I could write some poems and think okay which letters haven't I written down. And then, I would think, okay, Q, let me think about that. >> Ron Charles: Q, that's what you thought of was Q? >> Mary Jo Bang: No, I mean that's a point. At one point I had to think Q and what words would come to me. And one of them was quit. And then, I'd go off on [inaudible] which is what the poem is. But, it's started because I was looking at an article in People Magazine while I was in the dentist office. And it was about Cher. >> Ron Charles: This is in the book? >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And so, I wrote a poem C is for Cher. And then, after that, I started thinking, okay, what's B for? And what's D for then? And that's what gave me this idea. And then, when I exhausted, I thought, well, you know, I can't have a book with only 26 letters, poems in it. So then, what will I do? And then, some of my friends said well why don't you do the numbers? No, I don't think so. So then, I did alliterative titles using each letter and played with that until I had enough poems to publish the book. >> Ron Charles: That's fascinating. N as in Nevermore. I think you already attached the reference to another poem. >> Mary Jo Bang: N as in Never More. The Raven is stuck now into the shape of a principle taxadermic moment. The snapshot shows it as it falls in the line of staring down from the door frame and onto what we are and all but defeated. To define is to make material so says the raven. Below it is the eerie highway known as the ever death ravaged by war and wars and enigmatic attacks by a rocket who struck the hardest and blended into an incendiary pole. One way to see the birds to look at them as a frame and a violence mixing its message with the cold war of constant utterance, quote the raven, give me more. Mis means mistakes as shall mean catastrophe. The arm, the line that points to the start, a bar or six at the window and dying again. And, on the small screen, the bird turns back into the lining operatic into the story of key elements accident and defined with an ending that ties up the plot rather nicely. Although outside the box there's mockery spilling over on the unwitting wish to be and to be and to be better. And over that, lush layer of poppy shellac. Only when I'm posing do I feel real, this from the invisible crowd, this from the death's head, this from a bird looking down on the square where a woman is brushing back her hair. Her name is Lenore Nevermore. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: Only when I'm posing do I feel real. >> Mary Jo Bang: That was taken from some actress on a late night show. >> Ron Charles: Yeah? >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. I don't remember who, but I used it. >> Ron Charles: Because it's an irony that occurs throughout your work. >> Mary Jo Bang: Right. >> Ron Charles: Having to do with photograph, capturing but at the same time rendering artificial what's being imagined. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well also because the speaker is a construct. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And I come to understand that. That, I'm able to [inaudible] the truth and fill in a constant and stand on stage set. And so, I realize paintings give me a stage set sometimes or a character so I can keep going out on stages for [inaudible] or for [inaudible] I can hide behind a letter. >> Ron Charles: Read another one? In the Present and Probable Future. >> Mary Jo Bang: This is a hard one too. You're picking my hardest poems. >> Ron Charles: I want you to listen to the questions, the questions that are asked in this poem. >> Mary Jo Bang: This was actually published. This poem was written because I was asked, by the New York times, to write a poem. So, we followed the election in 2008 not knowing who would be president. And, they were going to, they asked seven poets. And, they were going publish them the day before the election. And then, at some point, they decided they would wait until, because they had so much election coverage, they couldn't devote, this was going to be on opinion page. So, the day after the election in 2008, the opinion page was filled with seven poems and this was one of them. In the Present and Probable Future. Here we are viewing the land: waves of grave and grain. That slight tremor? A house settling. A violent past walking through. And over there, the burning deck. The political machine. The inanimate come to life. The conventional flag wave. Cormorants on pitched roofs watch the ship of state mandate folded twice over. Many ingenious lovely things are gone. This turbulence. This coming one-two march through a landscape. The dark relative against the brilliance of the last act of some staged production. The cast bows. A tape player click, click, clicks. Some kind of clock. A unit of measurement. We wish ourselves back on the boat. Wish for the answer to the question: When should we walk out of the theater into the night? When should we accept that life is only an exaggerated form of special pleading, romanticized beyond saying into moon, stone, flock and trees. What in the picture would you get rid of? The land that stretches back to prehistoric times? Myriad islands? Icecaps and etcetera? The atmosphere? The human body? All of the above? All but the latter? You'd like to keep human as an aspect of the formula but rid it of its grappling ambition to destroy? Good luck with that. What does it mean to have a point of view? What does it mean to have a notable achievement? To succeed in representing the nuances of a determinate activity? Listen: however, events turn out, if we want to we can continue to see the moon as an outburst of lyric, a vision of John Keats and his friends, but still we have the battle to fight. How many more days will be there? The unperceptive will be busy believing in magic: crop circles, the unmanipulated image, definitions that defy definition. Others will take at face value the less favorable consequences of both cynicism and commercialization. The latter will say the flock is simply an assemblage, an obsessive presence looking down on the building where someone sits predicting the landslide rate. Long after we are gone we can say we were here. We were working, wittingly or not, towards the eventual erosion of places ground down and fought over, especially in the literal sense exploitation and industrial damage. Nothing is lost. If anything, we gain experience. There will be that unsullied moment, down to the last detail, when the acquired interview and other quaint signs of demise will speak to us, will speak about us to the flood and the fire. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: When should we accept that life is only an exaggerated form of special pleading? >> Mary Jo Bang: I don't think we can ever accept that. >> Ron Charles: What does it mean to have a point of view? What does it mean to have a notable achievement to succeed in representing nuances of a determined activity? The poem is full of these really great provocative questions that makes it so, you just want to go back and read it again. Listen: however, events turn out, if we want to we can continue to see the moon as an outburst of lyric, a vision of John Keats. >> Mary Jo Bang: And his friends. >> Ron Charles: And his friends. Yes, the lit poem turns back on romantic poetry itself, on romance and the way it represents them it's real. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well thank you. >> Ron Charles: Let's take a break let's just stand up, turn around, sit back down. Can we talk about your son? >> Mary Jo Bang: We can talk about the book. >> Ron Charles: Your son was 37 when he died in New York? >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. >> Ron Charles: How did that happen? >> Mary Jo Bang: We can talk about the book. >> Ron Charles: The book is a response to his death. >> Mary Jo Bang: The speaker in the book has suffered a loss and something I know a lot about. >> Ron Charles: I appreciate your willingness to go through this. >> Mary Jo Bang: Okay. >> Ron Charles: Could you read the first poem? >> Mary Jo Bang: Okay. A Sonata for Four Hands. Causes and consequences line up, Ready for the next dawn with its blight of glass bulbs. In the welled nothingness of definitely, there is another Sad sobbing day. Someone has seen you and says you were just fine, hours before you weren't. I say Come Back and you do Not do what I want. The train unrolls its track and sends its sound forward. The siren unrolls its sound and sends itself Forward. The first day of the last goes forward as the last summer you'll see. The dirge is all wrong for the season. Death remains Wedded to mystery. How Does the heart stop? On what Moment's turning? Which tick? And why? Only where Is settled. Behind an address. Some block Building. Some barricade brick That hides bracketed hours Until the doom door opens and my I sees. Police seal peeled back. Everything as you left it. On and over and under. Why are you not where you belong? A black hat on a hook says nothing. Ashes mirror ashes in a mirroring window. And now how Do we resolve this predicament? The body becomes the art of identity. A face in a photograph. The bas relief Around the morgue door. You, singularly you. And gone Invisible. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: And before we talk about them, another one toward the center of a book Intractable and Irreversible. >> Mary Jo Bang: Intractable, and Irreversible. The overcast sky, the, I'm sorry. The overcast cast of the sky is the secondary drama. On the screen at the back of the mind. Far from the vigilant eye, A dictionary definition of death is written Over the grid of a calendar sequence. Death is the date when the output is over. An irreversible heartbeat hiatus That goes by the name of no more. At home in his ash box, he was going nowhere Else. He was living with her now In a land of low clouds Where weather was the only possible change. The clouds see nothing. The clouds are nothing but ice changes and water. Water changes and morning's cold sets in motion The proximate, the visible, day. There will be no more of time and time's corruption For the ash in the box. The love of her life. She notices how quiet he is in there. Out here, she talks, I talk but always to a mirror Where a face looks out like a clock that says night Is coming and then it comes like a coat of silted black. Thank you, she says, as she slips into bed. One more alarm silenced. One more Closet door closed. One more Shoe sole set to the floor of checkered linoleum. The castle is quiet, the castle is snug. A dream bell begins to toll, to tell of the intolerable end that keeps going on. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: These poems give voice to what you call the hair tearing grief of the mother whose child has been swept away by the needle broom of her own mindless errors. That does not seem fair to blame. >> Mary Jo Bang: The mother? >> Ron Charles: The mother. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, the speaker in these poems, has that point of view. So, I don't think we can convince her that she shouldn't feel that way because feelings just are. >> Ron Charles: Right. Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: And, it is the nature of grief, I think, that it's unchanging and unchangeable. So, I think that the, this book which has meant a lot to a lot of people, I've been told, is probably gives voice to things that are very difficult to give voice to and that politest prevents us from somehow going to talk about the extremity. And there are poets like Dickinson, after great pain a formal feeling comes. And there it just sits ceremonious. I think that the reason she's so timeless is that she has given voice to those things that are very difficult to talk to each other about. And so, in some ways the poet's very lucky because she can write these things down and then trigger them [inaudible]. And then, the other people can read them and she has time to be interrogated by -- [ Laughter ] But, we don't ask Dickinson, what did you mean? Who died? And that's how I want these poems to be in the world is that they exist because they give voice to a state of subjectivity that is extreme. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And that many people have lost someone to death. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And, the circumstances of the death don't matter. The grief echoes similarly. I find death absolutely unfathomable. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: That someone can be. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And then stop being, it's, I will never get my mind around that. >> Ron Charles: Yes. How did you decide? You said in your poem you're going to condense to seven stanzas a particular world. >> Mary Jo Bang: I, actually that poem's from, again, an interview I read with a film director who said that you can create a whole world in seven scenes. And so, the translation of that would be seven stances. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: And so, as you can see from what I'm telling you I'm getting something from a wall plaque in a museum, I'm getting something from late night TV, I'm just, I always have my antenna out for appropriating life because when I put that in the poems I'm hoping the poems will give voice to something that feels freedom. >> Ron Charles: They definitely do. You describe the problems in one part as a transient distraction of ink on cloth. Nothing more can be said about that, it's so profound. The decision to write these poems, to me, seems to state from the decision to publish them. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Could you talk about that decision? >> Mary Jo Bang: I can. I wrote the poems and I, they were a way of distracting myself from that grief which was a dangerous form of grief and needed distraction. And, it was interesting after a while because I would critique what I was doing and say you should not be writing these poems because you are, you know, you are exploiting your own tragedy for making art. And then, I would think to myself, well, not really. I'm playing that old word game that I know how to play. And, by playing that game, just like playing solitaire, I'm distracting myself. But then, I would write something and sit back and read it. And, what I had written was so sad because it was my [inaudible] that that would take me back into it. And then, to get out of it I would write again. And then, I would distract myself by deciding where to break the line or what word to. >> Ron Charles: The technical aspect. >> Mary Jo Bang: The technical aspects. I couldn't be bothered with titles, that was too much. And so, they're, almost all of them, at least the early ones, were one word titles which then later I would go back and try to do something with. And, at some point, I realized, oh my goodness, people, poets have been doing this forever. >> Ron Charles: It's the oldest form. Isn't it? >> Mary Jo Bang: It's called an Elegy. And then, suddenly I realized that's what I was writing elegies. And I began to think about what an elegy is and one, it reconjures the beloved so that the beloved is back and there's a consolation in that until you realize that no, this is not the real beloved and I mean that's painful again. It also is a way to memorialize the phenomena. And, but most importantly I realized it was that distraction from grief. And so, then, I started writing a poem which is Elegy which I know read apart. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: As a way to think through what I was doing. And, I never intended to publish poems. But, after you've written a number of books, editors will sometimes approach you and ask you for poems. And so, I would write that that I didn't have any and that what I was writing now wasn't anything they would want to publish. And, they would insist that they would like to see it. And, if it was someone I knew, I would send a few poems. And, I was quite surprised that not only did they want those but sometimes they'd ask for more. And, I'd never had that experience. And, I thought how could these poems mean something to someone else because they're so personal? They, it perplexed me. But, when people received them then they were talking about how much they meant to them. And so, it wasn't until a few years later, I think, I totally understood what the book means to people or how they read it because it was just confusing. It would be, I don't know I can't find a metaphor for. >> Ron Charles: Emotionally confusing. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. To say it, I love that poem. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. That is odd. Isn't it? >> Mary Jo Bang: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: I was think as I read this the poem, the book was quite celebrated, you won a big prize. That must have been just disoriented for you to be celebrated, to receive praise, to go to awards ceremonies about this horrible event. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, the last thing was, that I began to feel, excuse me, I began to feel like we were doing it together, my son and I, and this was a way to continue being together. And, I knew how [inaudible] was with me as a poet, he kept my books on his desk and would loan them to his coworkers. And he always celebrated whatever prizes I had. And so, I knew he'd be very proud that we were doing this. >> Ron Charles: And in another poem you write, now she is sickened by the essence of recollection. >> Mary Jo Bang: Essence of what? >> Ron Charles: Recollection. Now she is sickened by the essence of recollection. In another you write memory is deeply not alive, it is a mock up and this renders it hateful. This is the language you used to talk about this strange both healing and agonizing process of elegy. >> Mary Jo Bang: Right. >> Ron Charles: There's these always desperately haunting sad images here. You write in one poem, it's as if the windows of night have been sewn to her eyes. Then there's this shocking element of surprise that runs through the poem. In the vacancy the world went on revolving. How could life go on when this has happened? I'm sorry. He still looked like he was, but he wasn't. >> Mary Jo Bang: Right. >> Ron Charles: How can I be and you not? You're constantly surprised again and again. >> Mary Jo Bang: Well, I think that, I think that [inaudible] something about writing poetry. And, I think that, because I was honest about my feelings and I think that it forever, it somehow made me more confident in terms of putting subject to the inner poem. And, I think that that's been very useful to me in sessions, not useful in terms of getting the fame for doing that, but useful in terms of satisfying my own desire, realizing my ambition toward a particular poem. So that, I'm allowing myself to be more earnest. I'm still wearing a costume, but, the actress can speak a little more directly. So, I think, that's, when you asked me to read some of these poems that enact the complexity of my thoughts. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Mary Jo Bang: I think I've found, since then, ways to be a little more direct about the subjectivity. >> Ron Charles: Would you read the poem you mentioned the Rule of Elegy? >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. I just want to add, because, my fear has always been that I didn't want to be reductive about complicated things. So, I think I tried to complicate the language in order to communicate complicated thoughts. But, I think that there are other ways or I think I've achieved ways of talking about complicated thoughts with a little more direction. And, I think that the gravity I was wanting in the poems is more apparent in the more recent work, like the Last Two Seconds. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: Most recent work. And, the book coming after that which has already been finished. The Role of the Elegy. The role of the elegy is to put a death mask on tragedy, A drape on the mirror. To bow to the cultural Debate over the anesthetization of sorrow, Of loss, of the unbearable Afterimage of the once material. To look for an imagined Consolidation of grief So we can all be finished Once and for all and genuinely shut up The cabinet of genuine particulars. Instead there's the endless refrain One hears replayed repeatedly Through the just ajar door: Some terrible mistake has been made. What is elegy but the attempt to rebreathe life into what the gone one once was Before he grew to enormity. Come on stage and be yourself, the elegist says to the dead. Show them Now after the fact What you were meant to be: The performer of a live song. A shoe. Now bow. What is left but this: The compulsion to tell. The transient distraction of ink on cloth One scrubbed and scrubbed but couldn't make less. Not then, not soon. Each day, a new caption on the cartoon Ending that simply cannot be. One hears repeatedly, the role of elegy is. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: What's so remarkable about that poem is that it's an elegy and it deconstructs and elegy at the same moment. It critiques it in a very aggressive way, sometimes in a very bitter way as though you're enacting an elegy and realizing how inadequate it is. Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: And voice, giving voice to the suspicion of why one is doing this and how one is using the particulars. The anxiety over doing that. >> Ron Charles: Yes. In one of your earliest poems you wrote loss is now what you live with. This is years, years ago. Does it get easier? >> Mary Jo Bang: Never. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Mary Jo Bang: No I think, I mean, wisdom is the advantage of aging, right. So, it's like. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Mary Jo Bang: So, it's like, and I think it's true. I think that one, having thought about things one's whole live, one's able to find ways to conceptualize like struggle, grief, all those things. And, I think that's useful to the self. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: There's a poem in here called Gone that begins with the lines the ordeal comes to its periodic end, which usually means the ahead is again. >> Mary Jo Bang: That was one of the last poems in the Elegy because I gave myself a year. I, realized that there were then poets who, they felt like they made a commodity of a tragedy that they experienced. And, I often felt that it's hard to maintain, as a reader, my interest in their exploration of that personal tragedy past a certain point. But, to them, they clearly have age in them. >> Ron Charles: And so, I felt that I didn't want to create six more books about this particular death. I didn't think it was good for poetry. I didn't think it was good for me. And so, I gave myself a year. And I decided that at the end of that year, I would never write about this subject again. Now, of course, I write about my feelings about. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Mary Jo Bang: This. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Mary Jo Bang: This particular [inaudible]. But, I don't pronounce it as such. And so, at the end of the year, I think I was also rather stunned by the fact that there had been no resolution to those feelings. That, we think of a year as being a long time, and, in some settings, it's not at all long, it's an eye blink. And so, I realized that I had given myself arbitrarily a year because a year's a quantity it's a measurement. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Mary Jo Bang: But, at the end of that year, nothing had changed. And so, there was that sense of that, it just continuous [inaudible] or the speaker. >> Ron Charles: Yes. To end with a poem from your latest book. Will you choose, you choose, because I've used up, I've used up too much of our time. >> Mary Jo Bang: Okay. >> Ron Charles: You don't have to pick one on Mark although I like those. I like many of them. >> Mary Jo Bang: Okay. Well I'll do this one and you did choose it. A Structure of Repeating Units. A lamp is a great gift, I think. The brass tack ouch of a hand to a hot bulb takes you straight to the top of the threshold of feeling. A small plastic object held to the cheek is also quite nice. I love poly socks, dishtowels with rick-rack, a surfboard anointed with one aqua stripe. Idle want seems to dog me along a long cord that's plugged into the boot in the mouth of the near recent past. The plastic, we both know, is nothing but a patchwork of particles, a mash-up of atoms, petroleum before or after its oil but still, it means so much more. Something finer than fine. Like pearls bred from time and insouciance. Or something like that. I turn out the light, lock the door, lie down, brush my hair from my forehead, and listen for the cinematographer to say to the dark, just wait and the world will come back. The terror I have, I keep hidden. >> Ron Charles: Good stuff. [ Applause ] I love the way that poem creates metaphors and turns things into metaphors and makes us realize that things are metaphors. >> Mary Jo Bang: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Things are plastic. You've been extremely generous and brilliant tonight. I'm so glad you came. Thank you very, very much. >> Mary Jo Bang: Thank you Ron Charles. >> Ron Charles: Thank all of you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
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Published: Mon Nov 28 2016
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