1. 14 Feb


    Blurbologyy 

    Blurbologyy 

     

  2. 7 Feb



    MARY JO BANG in conversation [Brooklyn Rail]

    Rail: I can remember a teacher in college saying quite bluntly one day, re: Dante’s persona:“Pretty cold son of a bitch.” Obviously that exaggerates the point, but still, here he was, a partisan in wars who placed people he knew in his own lifetime, among others, in eternal damnation, calling them out for their indecencies, making them forever famous by cataloguing their flaws. I wanted to know what your reaction to Dante as a persona in The Inferno was. This might not have occurred or mattered to you at all, for all I know. 

    Bang: I’m aware that one way of viewing the writer Dante is as someone who exacted revenge on those he blamed for his misfortune, and especially for his exile, by putting them in Hell. As a translator, however, I’m much more invested in the character named Dante and I find a great deal of tenderness in that character. He is so moved by the story Francesca tells him about how she and Paolo fell in love that he faints. He also faints at the end of Canto III, after passing through the Gates of Hell and confronting the horrors of hell and understanding for the first time what it means to be eternally damned. 

    One of my favorite moments in the Inferno is at the end of Canto 30. Dante is in that part of the 8th circle where counterfeiting and other kinds of fraudulent misrepresentation are punished. Dante watches while two of these pathetic sinners are having a spat. They punch and slap one another and trade childish insults back and forth. The one says: “You didn’t tell the truth when asked about your role in the Trojan horse incident. I hope you’re miserable knowing that the entire world knows about that”. The other says: “Well, you counterfeited coins; that means that while I have one sin, you have one for every coin you minted.” As they go on and on, Dante is mesmerized. It’s like watching an episode of reality TV. In the poem, he’s suddenly mortified when Virgil says, “Keep on staring and any minute now, I’m going to be cross with you… To want to listen to this sort of thing is a base desire.”

    There is a certain kind of humiliation that comes when someone you admire sees you acting in a way that doesn’t reveal your best self. Dante periodically indicts himself as he goes along. By doing that he indicates to the reader that there are moments when all of us fail to be our finest selves. And we ought to suffer when we do, because that suffering makes us want to modify our behavior and be a better person. That is also an effective strategy in terms of the writing. It’s easy to create a dystopian society that we can all agree is despicable, but the fact is we are a part of that society too. If we’re honest, we have to include ourselves in any critique of it.

    Read the full interview here: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/02/books/mary-jo-bang-with-adam-fitzgerald

     

  3. 2 Dec



    POEM: Collection Agency

     

  4. 20 Nov


     

  5. 25 Oct


    Liveright Gets Excited About Poetry While Norton’s relaunched Liveright imprint under Bob Weil is mostly focused on nonfiction and edgy mainstream fiction, the imprint’s director of publicity Peter Miller is working to build excitement around poetry for the upcoming season. In June 2013, the relaunched Liveright will publish its first debut poet: Columbia MFA graduate Adam Fitzgerald, whose first book is calledThe Late Parade, a collection of 48 poems which Boston Review has said perform a “fire dance around meaning itself.” Liveright—which was founded in 1917 and was, from its beginnings, known for publishing important poets like Hart Crane, ee Cummings and T.S. Eliot—was acquired by Norton in 1974 and has been a repository for its storied backlist, having released no new books until Weil took over and published his first list in April 2012. Given its storied history in 20th century poetry, Miller says that while “most publishers don’t put a lot of money behind their poets, this is an opportunity to bring some attention to Liveright.”

    Liveright Gets Excited About Poetry

    While Norton’s relaunched Liveright imprint under Bob Weil is mostly focused on nonfiction and edgy mainstream fiction, the imprint’s director of publicity Peter Miller is working to build excitement around poetry for the upcoming season. In June 2013, the relaunched Liveright will publish its first debut poet: Columbia MFA graduate Adam Fitzgerald, whose first book is calledThe Late Parade, a collection of 48 poems which Boston Review has said perform a “fire dance around meaning itself.”


    Liveright—which was founded in 1917 and was, from its beginnings, known for publishing important poets like Hart Crane, ee Cummings and T.S. Eliot—was acquired by Norton in 1974 and has been a repository for its storied backlist, having released no new books until Weil took over and published his first list in April 2012. Given its storied history in 20th century poetry, Miller says that while “most publishers don’t put a lot of money behind their poets, this is an opportunity to bring some attention to Liveright.”

     

  6. 9 Oct


    THREE NEW POEMS @ Conjunctions’ delicious website 

    THREE NEW POEMS @ Conjunctions’ delicious website 

     

  7. 4 Oct



    IN CONVERSATION with Maureen McLane for THE BROOKLYN RAIL

    Poetry criticism in our time has suffered a steady marginalization of print attention, to the greater disadvantage of poets, poetry enthusiasts, and the general reader. Even so, the last generation’s kingmakers—Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler—have loosened their grip on reliably championing the newest and most vital contemporary poetry (yet, of course, here there are exceptions: as evidenced with Marjorie Perloff’s rigorous, at times monotone, championing of conceptual poetics practiced today). Interestingly, many of the noted next-generation critics such as Stephen Burt and William Logan, whatever one makes of their too-soft or too-hard sells, are poets themselves. But if the old standard line about the best criticism being appreciative criticism means anything, if poets still make the greatest critics because of their firsthand sensitivity to the craft, Maureen McLane’s newest book, My Poets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), signals a much-needed injection into the pulse of mainstream discourse. Noticeably, McLane’s tack is not as “book reviewer” in this volume (though she has done distinguished work in that field, bringing to bear judgment sans kneejerk polemics); rather, she comes across as a digressive and astute close-reader, full of autobiographical pith and a relaxedly cheeky tone. What readers may find most interesting in her study of poets living and dead that mean most to her are her eclecticism (Gertrude Stein doesn’t usually sit side-by-side with the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, but why not!) and her almost Menippean formal ingenuity—the chapters are centos, rhapsodies, encounters rooted in memory and knowing pastiche. When I sat down with McLane last spring, I felt myself more aware than ever of how much poetry criticism needs such a return to personal investment and greater formal intelligence. The T. S. Eliot-Respectable-Man-of-Letters act is stale, and has been for half-a-century. Yet lucky for us, My Poets is anything but. These essays return the zeal and creativity to criticism—like that of Susan Howe’s classic My Emily Dickinson, which McLane’s title pays tribute to—with abundant skill.