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Mary Jo Bang

In the Present and Probable Future

  • 1 C Is for Cher | Translations: de
  • 2 E Is Everywhere | Translations: de
  • 3 In the Present and Probable Future | Translations: de
  • 4 Girls Dress Well to Stave Off Chaos | Translations: de
  • 5 The Star's Whole Secret | Translations: de
  • 6 Louise In Love | Translations: de
  • 7 Catastrophe Theory IV | Translations: de
  • 8 Mrs. Autumn and Her Two Daughters | Translations: de
  • 9 The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity | Translations: de
  • 10 Worse | Translations: de
Language: english
Translations: german (In der aktuellen und wahrscheinlichen Zukunft)
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In the Present and Probable Future

Here we are viewing the land: waves of grave and grain.
That slight tremor? A house setting. A violent past walking through.

And over there, the burning deck. The political machine.
The inanimate come to life. The conventional flag wave.

Cormorants on pitched roofs watch the ship of state mandate folded twice
over. Many ingenious lovely things are gone. This turbulence. This

Corning one-two march through a landscape created.
The dark relative against the brilliance of the last act

Of some staged production. The cast bows. A tape player dick, click,
Clicks. Some kind of clock. A unit of measurement.

We wish ourselves back on the boat. Wish for the answer
To the question: When should we walk out

Of the theatre into the night? When should we accept that life is only
An exaggerated form of special pleading, romanticized

Beyond saying into moon, stone, flock and trees.
What in the picture would you get rid of? The land that stretches back

To prehistoric times? Myriad islands? Icecaps and etcetera?
The atmosphere? The human body? All of the above?

All but the latter? You'd like to keep human as an aspect of the formula
But rid it of its grappling ambition to destroy? Good luck with that.

What does it mean to have a point of view? What does it mean
To have a notable achievement? To succeed in representing

The nuances of a determinate activity?
Listen: however events turn out, if we want we can continue to see

The image of the moon as an outburst of lyric, a vision of John Keats
And his friends, but we still have the battle to fight.

How many more days will be there? The unperceptive will be busy
Believing in magic: crop circles, the unmanipulated image, definitions

That defy definition. Others will take at face value the less favorable
Consequences of both cynicism and commercialization.

The latter will say the flock is simply an assemblage,
An obsessive presence looking down on the building where someone sits

Predicting the landslide rate. Long after we are gone
We can say we were here. We were working, wittingly or not,

Towards the eventual erosion of places ground down
And fought over, especially in the literal sense—exploitation

And industrial damage. Nothing is lost. If anything, we gain
Experience, There will be that unsullied moment, down to the last

Detail, when the acquired interview and other quaint signs of demise
Will speak about us to the flood and the fire.

© Mary Jo Bang
From: The Bride of E
Graywolf Press, 2009
Audio production: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin 2011

Translations:

Language: german

In der aktuellen und wahrscheinlichen Zukunft

Hier schauen wir also aufs Land: Wellen von Gräbern und Korn.
Dies leichte Beben? Ein Haus, das sich setzt. Eine grausame Vergangenheit zieht
                                                                                         hindurch.]

Und da drüben das brennende Schiffsdeck. Der politische Apparat.
Das Seelenlose zum Leben erweckt. Das übliche Fahnenschwenken.

Kormorane auf Steildächern beobachten, wie das Staatsschiff zweimal gedreht wird.
So viele geistreiche schöne Dinge tot. Diese Turbulenz. Dieser

Nahe Eins-zwei-Marsch durch eine Landschaft von Menschenhand.
Dunkles Relativieren vor der Brillanz des letzten Aktes

Einer inszenierten Produktion. Das Ensemble verbeugt sich. Ein Kassetten-
Rekorder klick, klick, klickt. Eine Art Uhr. Eine Maßeinheit.

Wir wünschen uns aufs Boot zurück. Wünschen uns die Antwort
Auf die Frage: Wann sollen wir das Theater

Verlassen und hinaus in die Nacht? Wann sollen wir akzeptieren, dass Leben nur
Eine übertriebene Art besonderen Flehens ist, romantisiert

Jenseits des Sagbaren in Mond, Stein, Schwarm und Baume.
Was würdest du aus diesem Bild entfernen? Das Land, das sich

Bis in prähistorische Zeit erstreckt? Zehntausende Inseln? Eiskappen und dergleichen?
Die Atmosphäre? Den menschlichen Körper? Alles davon?

Alles bis auf letzteren? Du behieltest den Menschen als Bestandteil der Mischung,
Würdest aber seinen entschlossenen Zerstörungswillen entfernen? Na, viel Glück.

Was bedeutet es, einen Standpunkt zu haben? Was bedeutet es,
Bemerkenswertes erreicht zu haben? Erfolgreich zu sein bei der Darstellung

Der Nuancen eines fest stehenden Vorgangs?
Hör zu: was immer dabei herauskommt, wenn wir wollen, können wir

Die Idee »Mond« auch weiterhin als kraftvolle Dichtung betrachten, als Vision von
John Keats und seinen Kameraden, die Schlacht aber steht noch bevor.

Wie viele Tage wird es noch geben? Die Unaufmerksamen werden eifrig
An Magie glauben: Kornkreise, das nicht manipulierte Bild, Definitionen,

Die sich den Definitionen entziehen. Andere werden die weniger günstigen Folgen
Von Zynismus wie Kommerzialisierung für bare Münze nehmen.

Letztere wird darauf bestehen, dass der Schwarm eine bloße Ansammlung ist.
Eine überwältigende Präsenz, die auf das Gebäude hinunterschaut, wo jemand sitzt

Und Erdrutschraten vorhersagt. Lange, nachdem wir abgetreten sind,
Können wir sagen, wir waren hier, Wissentlich oder nicht,

Wir arbeiteten auf die finale Erosion von Orten hin, die geschleift
Und umkämpft wurden, vor allem im wörtlichen Sinn—Ausbeutung

Und industrielle Zerstörung. Nichts ist verloren. Eher gewinnen wir sogar
Erfahrung, Diesen unbefleckten Augenblick, es wird ihn geben, bis in alle

Einzelheiten, wenn das erkaufte Interview und andere urige Zeichen des Niedergangs
Unsere Geschichte der Flut und dem Feuer erzählen.

Übersetzung von Barbara Thimm
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Mary Jo Bang

* 22.10.1946, Ferguson, United States
lives in: St. Louis, United States

The poet Mary Jo Bang grew up in Ferguson, Missouri. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri where she is working at Washington University as a professor of English and as the director of the Creative Writing Program. She was awarded numerous prizes and fellowships, such as a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellowship in 1997, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004. Her poems got published in various magazines like the New York Times, the Harvard Review, the New American Writing and in several anthologies like Best American Poetry. She is the recipient of various awards, including a Pushcart Prize. In 2007 she received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her book Elegy, which was estimated by the New York Times to be one of the most important books of the year. She was the poetry co-editor of the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005.

Bang contrasts in her poems a glamorous, American world with the dark regions of human existence, full of existential threat, emotional uncertainty and insatiable longing. She questions for instance the complex relation of modern media and human perception.

Publications
  • Apology for Want

    Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997

  • Louise in Love

    New York, NY: Grove Atlantic, 2001

  • The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans

    University of Georgia Press, 2001

  • The Eye Like a strange Ballon

    New York, NY: Grove Atlantic, 2004

  • Elegy

    St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2007

  • The Bride of E

    St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2009

  • Eskapaden

    Selected Poems. German/English

    Übersetzung: Barbara Thimm

    Wiesbaden: Luxbooks, 2010

  • The Last Two Seconds

    Poems

    2015

  • Elegie

    Englisch | Deutsch

    Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Matthias Göritz und Uda Strätling. Mit einem Nachwort von Matthias Göritz

    Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018

Prizes
  • 1994 Columbia University School of the Arts Dean's Award

  • 1995 "Discovery" The Nation Poetry Award

  • 1996 Katharine Bakeless Nason Publication Prize

  • 1998 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer's Award

  • 2003 Pushcart Prize

  • 2005 Poetry Society of American’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award

  • 2006 Anna Akhmatova Award

  • 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award

  • 2007 Washington University Faculty Research Grant

  • 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award

Links
  • Mary Jo Bang @ Poetry Foundation

    Website

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