Think of those intricate rooms behind glass at the Art Institute of Chicago, a chandelier dangling from crown molding at 1:12 scale.
Each poem feels like a scene from a life re-enacted on a dollhouse movie set, a scaled-down world.
“In my numb mind, a little leather jacket,/the sleeve no bigger than a thumb drive,” she writes, in “A Miniature.” “In that diminished instance,/I light a cigarette.
They’re small because they’re stored in cells, in our nutshells, our mental microfiche.
The work of miniaturizing a life is painstaking, and Bang’s poems have a characteristic clockwork precision — they tick and spin like mechanical music boxes.
Persons:
“, Rosencrantz, hutch, Mary Jo Bang, ”
Organizations:
Art Institute of Chicago
Locations:
Denmark