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Quote by Mary Jo Bang

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Elegy

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Author

Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang is an American poet born on October 22, 1946. Her work is known for its unique style and profound exploration of language. more

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“I see the poets, who will write the songs of insurrection generations unborn will read or hear a century from now, words that make them wonder how we could have lived or died this way, how the descendants of slaves still fled and the descendants of slave-catchers still shot them, how we awoke every morning without the blood of the dead sweating from every pore.”

PoetryPoemRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalitySystemic RacismInsurrection
Book:Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: Poems
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“Today he'll talk about Hardy's elegies. "But what are they about?", his students will ask. They want the love story. How he hates this question, understanding, now, in the shade of his office, that poetry is among the few things that can survive this question. If the poem is very good it is very hard to say what it is about. It is this and it is not that. It seems like one thing and then, after a while, not so much, one's understanding always shifting with the images and the sounds. He'll add something on Tennyson, perhaps, something on rhyme. Something about that very question, about poems being on of the few things that cannot be summarized or that can survive such an evil with something left over, something else. Something remaining. A trouble. A pleasure. A little extra.”

LoveUnderstandingPoemMeaningStorySummary
Book:The Other Side of the World
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