Poetry for All

Transcript for Episode 10: Mary Jo Bang, ÒThe Head of a DancerÓ

Abram:		

Hello, IÕm Abram Van Engen, an English professor at Washington University in St. Louis.Ê

Joanne: 	

And IÕm Joanne Diaz, an English professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.Ê

Abram:		

And this is Poetry for All

Joanne:	

This podcast is for those who already love poetry and those who know very little about it.Ê

Abram: 	

In this podcast, weÕll read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.Ê

Joanne: 	

Today we are really excited because Mary Jo Bang is joining us to discuss her beautiful poem ÒHead of a Dancer.Ó

Abram:		

Mary Jo Bang is the author of many poetry collections, including _Elegy,_ which received the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry, a translation of DanteÕs _Inferno_, and _A Doll for Throwing_ published in Graywolf Press, which includes this poem, ÒHead of a Dancer.Ó Welcome to the show, Mary Jo Bang.

Mary:		

Thank you for having me, itÕs a pleasure.Ê

Abram:		

Mary Jo, would you be willing to read this poem for us?

Mary: 		

IÕd be very happy to read the poem. [please see the text for the poem here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/the-head-of-a-dancer]

Joanne:	

Ahh, I love this poem so much! [Laughs]

Abram:		

Thank you! Such a good poem.

Joanne: 	

Thank you, yes. One of the things I love so much about the poem, and itÕs true about all the poems in your collection, ÒA Doll for Throwing,Ó is that they point to so many things at the same time. IÕm interested in the relationship between the words and the image that inspired you, right, a photograph by Lotte Jacobi of a dancer. IÕm interested in the shape of the poem itself, IÕm interested in the voice of the poem, the perspective, so maybe we could just try to take that bit by bit. And when I talk about this poem and its relationship to this photograph, just for people who might be listening but may not have the poem right in front of them, this is an ekphrastic poem. Ekphrasis is really just a fancy word for what is a pretty straightforward idea, but something that is quite difficult to execute, right, so simply put, ekphrasis is any poem that derives some kind of inspiration from an art object, whether itÕs a photograph, a painting, a sculpture. But the nature of that relationship between word and image is put so complex. So sometimes, ekphrasis can be argumentative, sometimes it can be performative, or descriptive, or meditative. So I guess for me, when I read this poem, I wonder what for you is your relationship to this photograph and how are you thinking about it in the poem?

Mary:		

I think that the photograph captured me because itÕs a very striking photograph and I was looking at photographs taken by women who were associated with the Bauhaus School of Design and I was finding photographs that would somehow speak to me, as we say. And this one certainly did, itÕs a womanÕs face and her face is very small, and she has on a very wide-brimmed block hat. So the contrast between that huge block hat that almost fills the space and that small face did certain things for me. One is the drama of it is very clear, but there was also about femininity, the woman has, in that period way, shaved her eyebrows so she just has these little arched eyebrows over her oval eyes and then this very small, little mouth. And thereÕs something very diminutive about her, but at the same time, because she is looking directly at you, thereÕs also a kind of strength. So I had been documenting or I had been researching another woman photographer Lucia Maholy. And I came across this photograph and in a way used this photograph to conflate thoughts and biography that belonged to Lucia Maholy with this figure in the photograph.Ê

Abram: 	

And can you say a bit more about who Lucia Maholy was and what drew you to her sort of life story and how you weave that into this poem?Ê

Mary:		

Well, Lucia Maholy was the first wife of L‡szl— Moholy-Nagy and when he went to Bauhaus to be one of the master teachers, she went with him. And she knew darkroom photography and had used darkroom photography and he didnÕt. And so she apprenticed herself to the workshop there in photography but they began making photographs together and she did all of the actual work and all the developing, all the darkroom work.Ê

Abram:		

Hmm.

Mary:		

But, um, those images are all ascribed to him without her name being anywhere on them. Actually, all of our knowledge of the Bauhaus and of those places and those products are because of her photographs. There are very few photographs that arenÕt by her.Ê

Abram:		

Hmm.Ê

Mary:		

And she had a very particular perspective when she would take those photographs, so theyÕre very recognizable. ItÕs not just whatÕs being photographed, itÕs how she positioned herself with regards to the object.

Joanne: 	

Yeah.

Abram: 	

Can we talk about the form of this poem, the poems throughout the book are prose poems and I wonder how that relates to the project of the book, so youÕve said in other contexts that you see yourself as creating a rhetorical surface on the page when you create a poem and of course that form always relates to content. So IÕm curious if you could talk a little bit more about why you chose the form of prose poetry for this book and what it achieves here that perhaps line breaks could not achieve or how you use it, how you see the rhythm in the sentence length and the sounds throughout this poem.Ê

Mary: 		

It was actually a very interesting experience for me because I chose that form because of the Bauhaus, because all those objects are very linear and very compact...
Abram:		

Mmmm.

Joanne:	

Ahhh.

Mary:		

...and free of ornamentation, so I felt that would be perfect, these Bauhaus poems will have their little Bauhaus house to live in.Ê

Abram:		

Yeah.

Joanne: 	

[Laughs]

Mary:		

And so for each one of them, it was decided in advance and theyÕre justified box, so itÕs not just a prose poem with a ragged right edgeÉ

Joanne:	

Mmmm.

Mary:		

...but itÕs these little blocks, just like those buildings are.Ê

Abram:		

Mmmm.

Mary:		

But what I realized later, and only later, was that I was writing differently than I would if I were lineating them and then concentrating on where the line should break. And it was interesting because when I finished the book and I started writing again, I started writing in prose blocks, but I wanted to continue to mine, somehow, this new way of thinking about what I was going to say. But [laughs] after a while I got tired of it because I love line breaks.Ê

Joanne: 	

[Laughs]

Mary:		

I love that moment when you kind of hold back a little surprise, orÉ

Abram:		

Yeah.

Mary: 		

...hold back whatÕs going to happen next because always in a poem, just like in prose, a poet wants to create a state of mind in the reader where theyÕre thinking without knowing theyÕre thinking, and then what happens? And then what? And then what? So that line break plays with that expectation and that desire to know Òand then what happens?Ó

Abram:		

Yeah, and I love this idea that youÕre talking about that even the process of thinking about what youÕre writing as youÕre writing is so impacted by the form that youÕve chosen to write in. When youÕre lineating, when youÕre looking for the line break and thinking very carefully about where it ought to come, it produces a kind of thought process about poetry itself, whereas here, the thinking is different. So IÕm curious if you could say just a bit more about what you felt in your sort of thought process when you didnÕt have the line breaks to be looking for. What sort of other kinds of things were you then looking for and thinking about in this kind of poetry?

Joanne:	

Mmmm.

Mary:		

Well, I think telling a story, perhaps. And thatÕs what the prose poem is good for. When there are narrative elements, the prose poem suggests Òthis is like prose, this is like a story, this has a narrative arc.Ó So I think that each of these in the back of my mind, I was telling a story for someone or about someone and I was mixing in my own stories at the same time because IÕm never not in the poem, but IÕm also not myself in the poem, IÕm many people, IÕm an actress. So I have scripts and some of that script has to do with my own biographical particulars, but some of the script IÕll borrow from someone else.Ê

Joanne: 	

Whoa, that was amazing. OkayÉ

Abram:		

[Laughs]

Joanne:	

...IÕm serious, that is one of my biggest questions for this poem, is who is the speaker, so IÕm not asking that because I want to find out autobiographical information about the writer, thatÕs not what I mean. Many of the poems in this collection, they do feel like dramatic monologues. Yes, they give us a sense of a kind of interiority and a psychological and intellectual exploration, but the title of your book is ÒA Doll for Throwing,Ó so that could refer to these sort of flexible rag dolls that were made by a Bauhaus artist, but they could also refer to the throwing of the voice that a ventriloquist does through a puppet, and so I wanted to ask you about ventriloquism in this poem and perhaps others in the book. And to ask you what are you ventriloquizing in the world of this poem?

Mary: 		

I think that the speaker is a marriage of Lucia Moholy and Mary Jo Bang. One of the dramatic moments in LuciaÕs life was when she was, in 1933, she and L‡szl— Moholy had split up and she was involved with a member of the Communist Party and he was arrested in her apartment. And she had to flee, her background was Jewish, and so she had to leave and she had to leave all her negatives behind, she left them in the care of L‡szl— Moholy-Nagy because they were still good friends and she was still doing his darkroom work for him. So she had to flee that very same day with only what she could carry with her and I knew, I was in Berlin at the time, I knew what train she was getting on, I had this sense of that need to escape, and I thought in that day and age, perhaps a woman would wear a hat if she were leaving and also to disguise herself somewhat. So that idea of the hat became something that someoneÕs wearing as theyÕre going on a train and then other disasters came into my mind. That dog in the home that runs out in front of a car actually happened to me many many years ago. And that came into my mind as a small disaster in that moment when you canÕt stop something from happening. So all of these thoughts just intersect in the mind and IÕm tracking them. And in tracking them IÕm writing them down.Ê

Joanne:	

Oh my gosh.

Abram: 	

Yeah, thatÕs beautiful and what it brings to mind for me is each of these particulars is particular. So you talk about there was an incident with a dog that you remember but itÕs also pointing to his broader theme that any of us can attach to, how do we not stop a disaster that we see is coming, or a disaster is coming, we can see it coming, but itÕs too late to stop. And so thereÕs these thematic elements tied to these really beautiful particulars throughout the poem that I think really makes it a blend of your voices and also a thing that could speak to anyone who enters this poem.Ê

Joanne:	

I wonder if part of that effect, Abram, is in part because IÕm roped into the poem as a reader, so from the very opening sentence, ÒThe days when you lean your head forward, then pull your head back, to see the sun is only a chrysanthemum, the eye is a white lake with a black boat moored at a particle pier that says what you want back isnÕt coming.Ó The ÒyouÓ is an address in part to the speakerÕs interior self but it also makes me think about my own memories, my own small disasters, my own things that I canÕt get back, and itÕs a poem that announces its losses in a very profound way right away and I love that about it.Ê

Abram:		

The other thing I love about this poem that I see happening in it is the way in which certain repeated words bring us back to these general themes. So for example, Òwhat you want back isnÕt coming,Ó and then a couple lines down, Òface facing front to see every last thing that is coming. What is coming is this:Ó and then ÒThe dog in the street pauses just as a car comes.Ó And so you get these repeated words that draw us again and again into this momentum of the poem, this idea of an emergency and also of a sense of the impending of the thing that is coming and facing it frontward.Ê

Joanne:	

Mmmm. Mmhmm. And also I love when you create, as Abram is saying, these stand-alone phrases or sentences that are just so memorable. So IÕm thinking of Òthe face is glass and that glass can make or break you.Ó Also, Òthe distance between what had been described and what was now happening was immeasurable.Ó Or Òthe dress is no longer the thing that the future is founded on.Ó

Abram:		

You know, as I look at this poem too, what I love about what youÕve created here is again the kind of movements that go on and the repetition that goes on, but also the movement back and forth between what youÕve written here and the image itself. So weÕll put a link on the show notes for this episode so people can see the image that this image goes with. But when you read that line, Òknowing the face is glass and that glass can make or break you,Ó and then look at the image, itÕs an incredible description of this image, because she is staring at you with, exactly as you described before, a kind of inner strength and at the same time it looks incredibly brittle and fragile.Ê

Mary:		

This whole idea of ekphrastic art is so fascinating because again, one trains oneself to look. Whether itÕs to look in appreciation at photographs, or art, or installation sculptures, and to allow those images to work on you is to spend enough time so that you lose yourself in the image. And you go past that initial just looking and just appreciating. You know, Roland Barthes in _Camera Lucida_ talks about two experiences of looking at photographs. One he describes with the Latin word ÒstudiumÓ which is a kind of intellectual interest, the other one is Òpunctum,Ó to pierce, and I think that some photographs do. And thatÕs his argument, that some photographs pierce us, thereÕs almost a physical reaction looking at them. And so I think that part of what one does with ekphrastic poems is to find those very images that are piercing to us and that will vary from person to person. So this was one of those that pierced me, I think a lot of it has to do with the femininity of this image as well and that whole idea of what it is to be a woman.

Joanne:	

Yeah.

Abram: 	

You know, I think thatÕs lovely and one of the ways I see getting lost in the image here and that movement in the poem itself. In the beginning, we have a black boat on a white lake, which is really her eyes. ÒThe eye is a white lake with a black boat moored at a particle pierÓ and you can almost see a kind of moving through the eyes of this image and then getting lost in all these thoughts that follow.Ê

Joanne:	

Yeah.

Abram:		

To the point where at the end of the poem, weÕre back at a boathouse. ÒThe cheek waits to be kissed by air as it was once kissed by the dark-haired boy in the boathouse whose late-night lessonÉÓ and the lesson there is again one of distance and closeness, the difference between description and experience. The distance between what had been described and what was now happening was immeasurable. And I feel like that line, I just love that line because first of all, I think thatÕs just so true of so many things, but also that it kind of summarizes where weÕve gone in this poem.

Mary:		

Thank you.

Abram: 	

With all of that said, Mary Jo, would you be willing to read this poem for us again?

Mary:		

I would. [please see the text of the poem here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/the-head-of-a-dancer]

Joanne:	

ThatÕs wonderful.

Abram:		

Mmmm. Thank you, thank you, Mary Jo.

Mary:		

Thank you, Abram, thank you, Joanne.

Abram: 	

And thanks to Graywolf Press for granting us permission to read this poem, which appears in _A Doll for Throwing._ You can learn more about Mary Jo Bang and her poetry and more about Lucia Maholy on the Poetry for All website at poetryforall.fireside.fm.

Joanne: 	

And please remember to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Ê

Abram:		

Thank you for listening, and thank you Mary Jo for joining us.Ê