Louise in Love [Paperback]

Mary Jo Bang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2001

In this stunning new collection of poems, Mary Jo Bang jettisons the reader into the dreamlike world of Louise, a woman in love. With language delicate, smooth, and wryly funny, Louise is on a voyage without destination, traveling with a cast of enigmatic others, including her lover, Ham. Louise is as musical as she is mysterious and the reader is invited to listen. In her world, anything goes, provided it is breathtaking. Bang, whose first collection was the prize-winning Apology for Want, both parodies and pays homage to the lyric tradition, borrowing its lush music and dramatic structure to give new voice to the old concerns of the late Romantic poets. Louise in Love is a dramatic postmodern verse-novel with an eloquent free-floating narration. The poems, rife with literary allusion, take journeys to distant lands. And, like anyone on a voyage without a destination, they are endlessly questioning of the enigmatic world around them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is not a book about silent screen star Louise Brooks, despite her photo on the book's cover, seeming references to the notoriously alcoholic Brooks's many lost weekends, and persistent echoes of the 1920s throughout. Bang's (Apology for Want) "dramatis personae" in these serial poems include, among many others, Louise; her sister, Louise; her lover, Ham; and Ham's brother, Charles. Nothing much happens, but sensibilities are conveyed with accurate emotions and a liberally deployed knowledge of the arts. Like many of the louche denizens of Brooks's era, Bang's characters can overdo the alliteration and borrowing of musicality of foreign languages, whether French or Italian: "Louise dreamed a clowder of cats was eating yesterday's dinner.../ December, a drear pentimentoAunveiling the mouth...." The sardonic "Here's a Fine Word: Prettiplease" has some of the world-weary tone of Jean Rhys and Dorothy Parker, but the dominant influence here may be John Berryman's Henry, who harkened back in a similarly multi-vocal fashion. And Louise's problems in her love affair with Ham (along with their erotic doubles) point to a wry gay subtext ? la Djuna Barnes. While some readers will find the clowder of characters and their Edward Gorey-like diction cloying, others will delight in Bang's unsparing ("Diaphragmatic heaving. Base emetic act./ The puky little sun glowing to a glare. Puissance.") time-channeling. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bang, author of the prize-winning Apology for Want (1996), unveils an enrapturing series of poems about a woman named Louise; Ham, the man she's sweet on; her sister, Lydia; Ham's brother; and a child. Amorphous characters, they are figments born of romanticism and figures out of paintings or film, yet Louise, who is more mood and musings than body, is driven into a fugue state by desire. These sly, subtly narrative poems manage to be both languid and epigrammatic, sensual and ironic as Bang conjures a diaphanous yet edgy realm in which Louise and her companions travel by train and motorcar to mansions and mausoleums, lakes and rivers, beaches and mountains, perhaps for real, perhaps in their dreams. Bang pays tribute to Keats and Woolf in scenes of emotional and physical opulence that are underpinned by reflections on death, just as flesh covers bone. Her language is musical; her consonance consummate; and the depth and complexity of her thoughts take on different configurations with each rereading of these playful yet serious, coy yet passionate poems. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (February 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802137601
• ISBN-13: 978-0802137609
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Difficult But Rewarding, November 24, 2001

By 

"krchicago" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Louise in Love (Paperback)

Not an easy read, and not something you can pick up, put down, read a few pages and come back to a day or two later. Ms. Bang has a unique voice and way with words -- you need to read a few of the poems before you get a sense of what's going on, and then you need to go back and reread what you've already done before you can continue. Even with concentrated reading and re-reading, I felt that I was getting only brief glimpses of Louise and her world. But the glimpses are often beautiful, and after a while they start to cohere into patterns of images, feelings, atmospheres, the outline of a narrative. There are enough exquisite turns of phrase ("His mouth was the yes that was wished on") to make the journey worthwhile, as it seems to be for Louise and her companions, even if the destination is obscure.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This philistine likes it. . . ., December 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Louise in Love (Paperback)

I really enjoy this book. Why do I like it? The language is sufficiently varied and sparkling and occasionally--every three poems or so--hits absolutely dead on, knocking out my wind. That's a pretty good ratio because I work out and don't easily get winded.
I think that Ms. Bang's found a decent form for her this go-round, seeing as when poems 'get all weird' a lot of readers just say, "Phew, what is this? Hey writer open a window and talk to healthy human beings fer crying out loud." But having a speaker--neurotic, stricken by love (that soon-to-be addition to the DSM-V) saying or thinking all that stuff--it just makes for a better story and the reader can get a handle on sympathetic literary characters. All that stuff coming directly from the persona of the poet, on the other hand, just makes me feel like I'm eavesdropping on a mutterer.
Berryman, toward whom Ms. Bang has suitably mixed feelings but owes a debt, Berryman found all that out after getting into Shakespeare's plays so much, in my humble opinion.
This is a terrific book and it is a book and not just a bunch of poems.