Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang

​Professor of English
MFA, Columbia University
research interests:
  • Contemporary Literature
  • Poetry Writing
  • Translation
  • The Divine Comedy

contact info:

mailing address:

  • Washington University
    CB 1122
    One Brookings Dr.
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

Mary Jo Bang is a nationally recognized author of seven books of poems. She has been the recipient of a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Berlin Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.

Professor Bang is the author of seven books of poems, the most recent of which is The Last Two Seconds (Graywolf Press, 2015). Her other books are Apology for Want (1997), which was awarded the 1996 Bakeless Prize and the 1998 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award; Louise in Love (2001), which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript-in-progress; The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (2001); The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (2004); Elegy (2007), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Bride of E (2009). She was the poetry co-editor at Boston Review from 1995 to 2005. She’s been the recipient of a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Berlin Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. She has a B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University, a B.A. in photography from the Polytechnic of Central London, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. Her 2012 translation of Dante's Inferno, with illustrations by Henrik Drescher, was named a Notable Book by both the Academy of American Poets (2012) and by the American Library Association (2013).

Writing Excerpt

     A CALCULATION BASED ON FIGURES IN A SCENE    

     There are still many marvels, you know.
     The festivals on Fridays. The divider
     in the center of the wasteland.
     On this side—flesh; on that—an iron claw

     and a new-made screw
     fallen from the factory window
     at noon. The doll doctor pushes the arm
     back into the socket. “There,” he says.

     Day is done. He wishes he could smoke
     but he gave that up long ago.
     The rubber sole of the nurse’s right shoe
     makes a squeak when she reaches the room.

     Silence surrounds the empty bed.
     The body is elsewhere.
     “When they want more,” she says, “I give it.”
     “When they want less,” she says,

     “I take it away. I always let them choose.”
     The doctor drums his fingers
     on the doll’s flat abdomen. A sea of blood
     moves back and forth to a song of no mercy.

From The Last Two Seconds, Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf Press, 2015)

This poem first appeared in Kenyon Review

Courses

  • L13 522: Poetry Workshop
  • L13 424: Poetry Tutorial
Matthias Göritz's Colonies of Paradise: Poems

Matthias Göritz's Colonies of Paradise: Poems

Purgatorio

Purgatorio