Cover art: David Levinthal, courtesy of Exposure NY
“This book bridges a gap between an experimental
tradition in American poetry and an older high lyric tradition. This is some of
Bang’s best writing, and one of the most exciting books of the year.”
THE NEW COLLECTION BY MARY JO BANG,
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND
"ONE OF THE FINEST POETS OF HER GENERATION" (MARJORIE PERLOFF)
Following her acclaimed Elegy, Mary Jo Bang’s sixth collection, The Bride of E, confronts what the first
poem posits in its title: “Cosmic Aloneness Is the Bride of Existence.” Out of that solitude of being, Bang has
fashioned an abecedarian that is at once wild and rapturous in its language and
music, and compelling and beautiful in its awareness of and yearning for what
isn’t there. The Bride of E is the brilliant new work by one of our essential,
most innovative poets.
“[Mary Jo] Bang’s abecedarian
odyssey is allusive and zippy, defying expectations with every line.”
—BOOKFORUM
“The alphabet, as an organizing
principle, is arbitrary. But around each of its discrete, singular letters,
like goldfinches to thistle heads, notions flit, cluster, and congregate. This
is precisely what they do in The Bride of
E, Mary Jo Bang’s compendious new alphabet book, casting shadows, revealing
flashes of light and color. These are poems of deft invention, explorations
into a trove of ready happenstance. They are not all happy poems, but they are
all avowals—like the letters of the alphabet, they are for things. Nothing can
be denied. This is a book of darks and delights. It is totally amazing.”
