Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poems – including A Doll For Throwing, Louise in Love, The Last Two Seconds, and Elegy, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award – and a translation of Dante’s Inferno, illustrated by Henrik Drescher. She has received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

'The Experience of Being Outside', a new poem by Mary Jo Bang

October 2019, no. 415 • 25 September 2019

An insight examines a lifetimewhile an ocean flows under my feet.My feet no longer feel since my body’s beside itself.I’m at an altar, calling on the godsof the boggled mind to save me, pouring two more mother-may-I’sinto the emptiness.I’m at risk of being pushed through a plate glass window.The Hellhound looks down on mefrom a higher plane – two evil eyes and three mouthsall work in ... (read more)