A Conversation With Mary Jo Bang – Chicago Review of Books

A Conversation With Mary Jo Bang – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Mary Jo Bang’s acclaimed translation of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno starts with this unforgettable verse: “Stopped mid-motion in the middle / Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky—Only / a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.” As I am “mid-motion in the middle” of my … Read more

Telling the Story of the National Women’s Football League in “Hail Mary” – Chicago Review of Books

Telling the Story of the National Women’s Football League in “Hail Mary” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] For as long as sports shape so much of our culture—globally, nationally, and locally—the stories we tell about them will shape us, too. In the United States, football remains the most popular sport, generating billions of dollars in revenue every year. Women and other people of marginalized genders have been systematically shut out of … Read more

Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell in Dante Alighieri’s “Purgatorio,” Translated by Mary Jo Bang – Chicago Review of Books

Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell in Dante Alighieri’s “Purgatorio,” Translated by Mary Jo Bang – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Reading the poet Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio, I thought of a widely-circulated photograph from the COVID pandemic. An Italian doctor in a surgical gown and two face masks holds a sign reading, “When this hell ends:/…And then we emerged again to see the stars.” The quote is from the … Read more