Apology for Want

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Overview

There is a keenness in the poems of Apology for Want that one rarely encounters in a first collection, an unfailing and unflinching exactitude - of language, of metaphor, of emotion. Mary Jo Bang is a poet of unerring discernment, of uncanny perspicacity. The precision in these poems is never gratuitous; this is fine furniture where every nail is driven by necessity. Bang delineates the all-too-human condition of gazing and longing and gives us cautionary tales of what happens to those who shun restraint and ...
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More About This Book

Overview

There is a keenness in the poems of Apology for Want that one rarely encounters in a first collection, an unfailing and unflinching exactitude - of language, of metaphor, of emotion. Mary Jo Bang is a poet of unerring discernment, of uncanny perspicacity. The precision in these poems is never gratuitous; this is fine furniture where every nail is driven by necessity. Bang delineates the all-too-human condition of gazing and longing and gives us cautionary tales of what happens to those who shun restraint and yield instead to desperate attempts at satisfaction.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
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 articulateor 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.)
Library Journal
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 coastcold, 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
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780874518221
  • Publisher: Middlebury College Museum of Art
  • Publication date: 7/1/1997
  • Series: Bakeless Prize Series
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 80
  • Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.47 (h) x 0.29 (d)

Meet the Author

Mary Jo Bang grew up in St. Louis and was educated at Northwestern University, Westminster University (London), and Columbia University. In 1995, she received a "Discovery"/The Nation award. She is poetry co-editor at the Boston Review.
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Read an Excerpt

want appropriates us,
sends us out dressed in ragged tulle,
but won't tell
where it last buried the acorn or bone.
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Table of Contents

Waking in Antibes 3
The Desert on Hand 5
Pilgrimage 6
Real Time 8
The Oracle 9
Granite City, Montana 10
Apology for Want 11
Chicago 12
Elegy 13
Gretel 14
A Screen Door Slams 16
In Order Not to Be Eten Nor All to Torne 18
The First Room Is a Woman 21
Open Heart Surgery 23
In This Business of Touch and Be Touched 24
Putting Down a Cat 26
A Goddess Shakes Spring Awake 27
The Clairvoyant 28
The Elements of Style 29
What is Red 30
In St. John's Hospital 31
Autopsy 32
Where Snow Falls 33
If Wishes Were Horses 37
Electra Dreams 38
The Crossing 39
The Holy Grail 40
Persephone Leaving 41
Behind This Passion 43
What Was Seen 44
Metaphor as Symptom of Reason's Despair 45
Nonesuch 46
The Fall 47
No Talking 49
Slow Dancer 53
Ashes 54
Like Spiders, Step by Step 55
& There He Kept Her, Very Well 56
Renunciation of Dreams and Such 57
How to Leave a Prairie 59
From a New Place 60
Bartok in the Sculpture Garden 61
Reign of Unreason 63
Uses of Restraint 65
Twilight Amnesia 67
Cafe Edgar 69
Notes 70
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