Mary Jo Bang

C Is for Cher

Idioma: inglés

Traducciones: alemán (C steht für Cher)

C Is for Cher

Culture miniature and clad as Cleopatra, she descends
A set of semicircular steps
Tiled in a geometric mosaic pattern

And there she finds the answer: everything
Changes depending on whether
You're up or down. Behind her,

A high-relief rectangle proscenium,
Beside her, whatever intrigued her last.
An unofficial fan leaps feverishly into action, At that,

She seems to multiply. History will be filled
With the shower of dots that will become her.
At that, she becomes. It's complex.

Through the glass she sees a pair of dazzling slippers,
At dinner, her drink was called a Vladimir,
Hers was the plate that contained Washington oysters.

There she held a fork. There she was on a stage
Of discourse. Of course. Mickey Mouse comes over
And stops to stare. Cher is dressed a long gold dress.

The sequins form stripes. »If I could turn back time.«
She’s singing. And Mickey in his red pants is acting
Like the good will minister to an enraptured world.

Mickey thinks. He turns the corner.
To the gift shop: ever open.
He buys retractable mother-of-pearl opera glasses

As a present. Yes, it’s over. The present.
In which you discovered forward-thinking thought.

Mary Jo Bang

* 22.10.1946, Ferguson, Estados Unidos
Vive en: St. Louis, Estados Unidos

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.

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