Apology for want

Mary Jo Bang

Book - 1997

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Published
Hanover, NH : University Press of New England 1997.
Language
English
Main Author
Mary Jo Bang (-)
Physical Description
71 p.
ISBN
9780874518221
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

There is a hush to this collection, winner of the 1996 Bakeless Prize for first books of poetry sponsored by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Bang asserts that "want" is insistently silent and always on the verge of being articulated. But, being a poet, she has to articulate‘or at least go through the motions, which she does by favoring couplets or triplets to provide a featherlike touch. In "Gretel," a retelling of the Hansel and Gretel tale, Gretel addresses her mother: "You know we were never meant/ to live here, only to learn relinquished,// forsworn, to grasp with wet hands the cold/ metal of life, then find a way to let go." Bang creates a sense of being scrubbed clean down to the barest elements: "Tomorrow we will arrive wearing a white dress,/ dark hair, clean hands. A knock will deliver us." What's enjoyable about the collection is a nice tension between the clarity of form and the open-endedness of Bang's articulated emotion. Her lines may be clean, but they exert no tyranny of meaning and so invite a second reading. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

These difficult, allusive poems won the 1996 Bakeless Prize, awarded by Middlebury College and the publisher for a first book by an emerging writer. Intelligent yet insular, the title poem makes a case for art as the attempted fulfillment of spiritual desire, distinguishable from animal desire in that it can never be satisfied. There are strains of John Ashberry in the chord changes here: "I know I stand for too long, gazing/ with wistful face at the muted tints of objects/ on shelves. How smart we are all getting." Part 2 (there are four parts) escapes from the self-referential world of poems about poetry into the operating room, where the narrator, presumably a doctor or medical student, lances the abcess on an addict's arm. And it is here that the book comes to life; the next poem uses punning wordplay to transform an observed open-heart surgery into a brilliant gloss on the human condition. Several scholarly endnotes emphasize the author's interest in words and their derivations: "And things can be borrowed:/ gift comes from geve, loanword from land/ of finger-fringes coast‘cold, hospitable/ means act of bounty, new owner." Interesting, with occasional flashes of brilliance; for larger poetry collections.‘Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.