Inferno: A New Translation
"Where Dante looked to the politics and culture of his contemporary Italy for allusions to illustrate his sense of faith and morality, Bang mines American pop and high culture. Yes, traditionalists and scholars may shriek upon seeing Eric Cartman (ofSouth Parkfame), sculptures by Rodin, John Wayne Gacy, and many others make anachronistic cameos in Bang's version of Hell, but this is still very much Dante's underworld, updated so it pops on today's page. The result is an epic both fresh and historical, scholarly and irreverent. . . . This will be the Dante for the next generation." —Publishers Weekly"The only good Hell to be in right now is poet Mary Jo Bang's innovative, new translation of Dante'sInferno, illustrated with drawings by Henrik Drescher. Bang's thrillingly contemporary translation of the first part (the juiciest part) of Alighieri's 14th-century poemThe Divine Comedyis indeed epic. . . . Once you embark on this journey, you may wish to read not only all of Mary Jo Bang's work but all of Dante's, too." —Vanity Fair"Bang uses anachronisms when they'll add some punch—hell's hot wind is like a 'massive crimson camera flash'—but it's still Dante, wordy, guilty and full of splinters that don't come out. Hell is where Bang went after her National Book Critics Circle Award-winningElegy, about the death of her son, and herInfernois a classic recast for our age, a hell we'll find ourselves in, an old poem made new by one of our most surprising and innovative poets." —Craig Morgan Teicher, National Public Radio"Bang [dwells] in depths—not only in Dante's, but our own. . . . Bang's hell is our culture, the numbing proliferation of texts, images, meanings, interpretations. For her, the perfervid busyness of our culture leads to a deadening akin to spiritual numbness. Hence the allusions to everything from Woody Allen'sCrimes and Misdemeanorsto the Boy Scouts to frozen Jell-O to the Hotel California—these are the fragments that have shored up against our ruins, to borrow from T. S. Eliot, who knew a thing or two about Dante, and death, and fittingly appears several times in these pages." —New York Daily News"Mary Jo Bang's new translation of Dante'sInfernorestores meaning to that old book-blurb cliche, 'startlingly original.' . . . Imagine a contemporary translation of Dante that includes references to Pink Floyd,South Park, Donald Rumsfeld, andStar Trek. Now imagine that this isn't gimmicky. . . . Imagine instead that the old warhorse is now scary again, and perversely funny, and lyrical and faux-lyrical in a way that sounds sometimes like Auden, sometimes like Nabokov, but always like Mary Jo Bang." —BOMBlog