Mary Jo Bang Quotes

• A child, then a man, now a feather / Passing through a furious fire / Called time.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Children, Grief, Men

  Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

  4 Copy quote

• And now the question: what do we do with the longing
  for what can destroy us?

  Mary Jo Bang

  Longing

  7 Copy quote

• What is desire but the hard wire argument given to the mind's unstoppable mouth

  Mary Jo Bang

  Mind, Desire, Wire

  4 Copy quote

• I say every dog looks like no other
  but that isn't true. Not entirely.
  Difference is slippery.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Dog, Differences, Looks

  6 Copy quote

• The wheel begins its only if turning. / It had never stopped. / This is life's bargain that motion / Is hope.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Grief, Wheels, Bargains

  Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

  4 Copy quote

• To say you loved a person. / To say that person no longer exists. / A tragic flawed fate going on and on and on.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Grief, Fate, Tragic

  Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

  4 Copy quote

• Why are you not where you belong? / A black hat on a hook says nothing. / Ashes mirror ashes / In a mirroring window.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Grief, Mirrors, Black

  Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

  6 Copy quote

• You are reduced / To the after-sorrow / That will last my lifetime. The hair-tearing / Grief of the mother / Whose child has been swept away.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Mother, Children, Grief

  Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

  4 Copy quote

• Bertrand Russell said, 'Electricity is not a thing like St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a way in which things behave.' And it's not 'they' who say, but Walter Benjamin who said, 'Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base and the banal.' In September, 1940, Benjamin died under ambiguous circumstances in the French-Spanish border town of Portbou, while attempting to flee the Nazis.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Historical, Events, Borders

  4 Copy quote

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