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Mary Jo Bang Quotes

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

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

Mary Jo Bang
Longing

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

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

Mary Jo Bang
Mind, Desire, Wire

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

Mary Jo Bang
Dog, Differences, Looks

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

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

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

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

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

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