A Film in Which I Play Everyone: Poems

by Mary Jo Bang

A Film in Which I Play Everyone takes its title from a response David Bowie gave to a fan who asked if he had upcoming film roles. “I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized autobiography that I am writing,” Bowie answered. “Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.”Mary Jo Bang’s brilliant poems might be the soundtrack to such a movie, where the first-person speaker plays herself and everyone she’s ever met. She falls in and out of love with men, with women, and struggles to realize her ambitions while suffering crushing losses that give rise to dark thoughts. She’s drawn to stories that mirror her own those of women who struggle to speak in a world that would silence them. Embedded in these poems are those minor events that inexplicably persist in the memory and become the time she lied and had her mouth washed out with soap; the time someone said she wasn’t his “original idea of beauty but something. / Something he couldn’t quite // put his hands on”; the time she stood in indifferent moonlight on a pier as a cat lapped at the water. Tinged with dark humor and sharpened with keen camerawork, A Film in Which I Play Everyone stars Bang at her best, her most provocative.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

120 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 5, 2023

About the author

Mary Jo Bang is an American poet. In her most recent collection, The Bride of E, she uses a distinctive mix of humor, directness, and indirection, to sound the deepest sort of anguish: the existential condition. Bang fashions her examination of the lived life into an abecedarius—the title of the first poem, "ABC Plus E: Cosmic Aloneness Is the Bride of Existence," posits the collection's central problem, and a symposium of figures from every register of our culture (from Plato to Pee-wee Herman, Mickey Mouse to Sartre) is assembled to help confront it.

Bang is the author of five previous books of poetry: Apology for Want, Louise in Love, The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon and Elegy, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and was named a 2008 New York Times Notable Book. She’s been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. She has an M.F.A. from Columbia University, an M.A. and B.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University, and a B.A. in Photography from the Polytechnic of Central London. From 1995-2005 she was the poetry co-editor at Boston Review. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is a Professor of English and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Washington University.

Reviews

[Ken]

One of those "didn't move me one way or another" poetry collections. Or "liked some poems, disliked others" collections. Or "impossible to review so why not just offer a representative poem" collections.

I do know this. The poet has an awesome name. I mean: Mary Jo Bang? Super memorable, which is nice when people wander into a bookstore. That is, if her book is on the shelf in the first place. That is, if your bookstore even HAS a poetry section.


HERE WE ALL ARE WITH DAPHNE

Here we all are at the waterfall, aligned and fixed
like the stars overhead: that limited canopy
under which the laughter of a cosmic joke

echoes out into space. I'm one of the many
waiting for the billow to be
like it is on the sea -- full-bodied, beautiful,

a more than adequate distraction
from the war that gets fought inside.
We are all dying but some more than most,

so says my interiority. It talks to me
as green fills the screen. It takes my arm
and walks alongside me. I never ask

where I'm going. I know I'm not meant to arrive.
Me in my nice clothes -- cutwork dress,
blindfold of bark from the moment

a man turned me into a tree. "See," he said,
"isn't this all for the better? You with no mouth
to speak of?" By you he meant me.


I liked this allusion to mythical Daphne, its playfulness, the way it ties into the book's title (which is taken from a David Bowie quote, thank you). Nice use of rhyme and other sound devices. Finishes with a Bang, too.

(Sorry, but the name I so like inspires in sometimes regrettable ways.)

[Alarie]

The title of this collection deserves a 5-star rating. Unfortunately, taste is subjective, and I was not as excited as I expected to be by the poems within. However, poets are badly treated in the poetry world. While many novelists get tens of thousands of ratings and can afford a few slams without needing damage control, poets can be knocked low by just one or two unfavorable reviews. I know that Mary Jo Bang is a reward winning poet, so I’ll leave it to her fans to rate this book.

[Frank Atlas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.


A Film in Which I Play Everyone by Mary Jo Bang is a wonderful collection of poems. This collection really fits the name as there is such a cinematic element to each of these poems, touching on many different themes, and the utilization of imagery is so captivating. The title being taken from a quote by David Bowie feels comfortable, as each poem has a sense of magical uniqueness that can very much feel connected to a person like David Bowie. Diving into this book provides such a similar experience as to going to the movies, connecting with each story in one way or another, but also allowing us to enter into new and unknown spaces we may not have traversed before.

Expected publishing date is September 5th, 2023 by Graywolf Press

[Sandra Del Rio]

I felt it in every fiber of my being. I was shaken
by what it implied: A stronger god than I is about to take control.

[Blair Hill · Rating 2 out of 5]

The poet's use of language was lovely; rhythm and pacing were particular standouts.

However, I never found anything to ground myself in. It was all dizzying and relied too heavily on displacement for me. I can appreciate being spun in circles if I'm eventually given something to look at, but it felt like depth and meaning were always kept just out of my sightline.

[Madye Stromboli]

ugghgghgghhghh a big no from me but here's some quotes I liked

"The lion has a thought, I might be able to live like this but a battered animal is only certain of the air entering and exiting its lungs and its face looking down at the nothing that's left where something once was."

"The question is not whether we have free will, but what choices history offers us. The strongest force is conformity, not passion, not even greed for possessions because who would ever want a diamond unless they were told to. Here, someone must have said, you want this."

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was demoralized reading the first couple poems in this collection. What the heck were they about? But then I went back and read the review in the NYTimes which alerted me to look for keywords. That helped! I really had to pay attention but I got into the swing of things and really enjoyed this. 

This is intermediate to advanced poetry in my perspective but it beats scrolling Instagram for even more demoralizing headlines.

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems feature a kind of detached, bemused observation, but menace hangs over them: references to war, or "A hand (not mine) covers my mouth." Luckily, this threat of violence rarely becomes overbearing, as in her poem "Reign of Terror.

Bang tends to muse freely, coming up with poetic passages such as "our own oval
empire" and "a girl who got blamed for nature." There are moments of narrative, and sequences of suggestive phrases that pile on one another. I have to say that some of the concepts and metaphors are overused, and that many of the references are glib. What I like is when a sense of infinite expanse comes out in lines such as "You shake your head and think, the sea was once everything we needed."

[Liz Mc2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t “they” say that everyone in your dreams is you? I kept thinking of that as I read, because these poems are often strange and dreamlike, diving deep into the mind, memories, fears. How do you make sense of the senselessness of life? “I could have been better / if I hadn’t been me but I was stuck, / with my head tracking my thoughts, / my self tracing each second back / to a biblical beginning . . . .” Somehow this captures exactly how I feel about my work in therapy, trying to undo my depression.

[Dana]

storytelling wise, this book is what The Kingdom of Surfaces wants to be. at the same time it’s a bit like folklore.. Long. I had the same problem as fiction which is that I found it hard to care, sometimes

[Keely · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the Bowie-inspired title of this poetry collection, but unfortunately, I couldn't manage to connect with more than two or three of the poems. I read a fair amount of poetry and am used to actively engaging with a poem and working to orient myself within it, or else just making peace with the disorientation and enjoying the experience of a poem without needing to fully understand it. But that was not my experience in this book. For me, the poems felt borderline impenetrable, with no hand-holds to grab. My brain slid right off them.

[Emily Ellis]

I don’t think I understand poetry lol.

Regardless, my favorites were:
The Assumption
The Problem of the Present
In the Movie of my Unraveling Mind
Part of a Larger Picture
The Trip
What Would I Have Been
I Could Have Been Better
On the Nature of Hardwiring
The Actual Occurrences


The 5th section as a whole was the most resonant for me.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

found poem:

You have to be a seer to see. What you really want is to be
a camera, documenting the height you’re about to fall from.
The unique sensory effect of the mind holding on to itself while
steadying the sky in order to sustain the injury and the after-
effects of the earthquake, the cutoff that occurs against your
will where you have to turn off in order to engage with the light
that comes in to announce the day’s breathing and being in a
complicated network made of a mesh that allows everything
to fall through. When the book closes, we open it again just to
see ourselves in the margin. The scene is the self’s displacement
from a place where only dotted lines divide any two things,
one from the other. The concrete sky insists on rain.
I’m making sense all the time of all the senseless endings.
Is change even possible? The door opens.

I reach out my hand, find a melting-snow heaviness that runs
a fine-tooth comb through the air, transforming the mist into
pale gray haze. The color of the sky can be altered by a blue-dot
sugar cube melting on a tongue. There is, of course, that surrealist
train, the one that is continually leaving the station while staying
right where it is. One way to see it is: the self is infinite and
circular, those thoughts get mixed in with a treasure trove
of purple lilacs beside a door, to be forever inside the revolving
universe has never been my dream and yet while I was here,
I wanted knowledge. The water would sometimes send light
at an angle that would briefly illuminate my lightless mind.
I knew I could see inside myself but no one else could.
I had no second self. An insight examined a lifetime

while an ocean flowed under my feet. My feet no longer felt
since my body was beside itself. Even now, I’m aware of the air
stirring the trees, the bees becoming a shimmering living
satin fabric. I was at an altar, asking the best gods of the boggled
mind to save me, tossing two more mother-may-I’s into
the emptiness. You were, you were now altogether yourself,
and happily one with the world. It’s so beautiful when it sinks
in. Hold me, closeness says. As long as I have sight, I’ll see the
heaven that makes you up. The souvenir photo shows you as

you’ve never seen yourself. You see the Milky Way as the
downy drink of morning. The deaths past and present
in ashes, each discrete moment a memory palace waiting
to be built alongside a suspended high-wire antenna
set to receive the unending message:
this is what is meant by your one and only life.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard, at least for me, to rate and review poetry. Maybe I'm not smart enough to get all poetry, or maybe it's not meant to be "gotten," sometimes. One thing that struck me while reading this particular volume was that poetry, when done well, is quite intimate. I believe that it allows the poet to express themself in ways that a typical novel doesn't allow. Poetry can be autobiographical without overtly seeming so.

The title of this volume was taken from a quote by David Bowie, and that is described by the poet in the notes section at the end of the book. In right at one hundred pages, we get probably 75 or so poems, most less than a single page, a handful bleeding over into a second page. The imagery contributes to the intimate nature of poetry. I enjoyed this book, and maybe even got what the poet was trying to say a few times.

For example, "A Set Sketched by Light and Sound" seems to be about women being mistreated and always being told what to do, how to be. A sense of rebelling against what is the "norm" in a society run by men. In "I Am Already This Far," I got a sense of the poet writing about experimenting with who one is. We all do this at some point, right?

I believe my favorite poem of all was "No Questions," in which the poet writes, "because you are a woman and this is what you were taught women do." More along the lines of "A Set . . ."

In some ways, this collection of poetry could be depressing, but at the same time, they offer hope that, perhaps, things might change.

I would recommend this collection for anyone interested in contemporary poetry that pushes against societal boundaries. Or maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about.

[Michaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We are all dying but some more than most..."

"...you're underwater in a river of kindness that loves only you."

"There should be no anxiety in knowing the world will die when we die. This is how it is with us..."

"...the real is wherever we are. The days refuse to stay put. Speaking is a way of living with the ruin we were given."

"What you really want is to be a camera, documenting the height you're about to fall from."

"Who listens to anyone anymore?"

"When the book closes , we open it again just to see ourselves in the margin."

"...silence is a sleeve, I'm an arm in it."

"I'm making sense all the time of all the senseless endings. A day is as long as the time it takes for the mind to consider life and death countless times."

"But not everything is possible. You are only the heroine in your own story."

"There at the edge of the water - Venus was where I'd last left her, standing on a half shell, staring hard at reeds bending in the wind. She & I both wanted to see something change."

Such a marvelous and stunning collection of poetry. I loved Mary Jo Bang's work, and her poems truly spoke to my soul. Some unique and artistic words with a play on David Bowie. She thinks deeply like I do, so I felt a relation to her.

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

bro i just



some of my favorite poetry by her; maybe most cohesively my favorite volume. each poem a short film, tightly structured & sharply observed; it's uncanny how cinematic most of them turn even as they recount incredibly concealed or otherwise inward processes, as if it were possible to watch the synaptic illumination within a person's own becoming. a film that traces the receding of a person as they fail to "play" themselves.

everything has already made you, you. you can watch it. you will not survive this.

"the water / would sometimes send light at an angle / that would briefly illuminate my lightless mind."

"I fold myself away. No mirage // of sirens hammering the glass front / of the hospital down the block. / Stars guide the eye across the sky. / It will be like that. Again and again."

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 26 of #TheSealeyChallenge 2023. A Film in Which I Play Everyone by Mary Jo Bang published by Graywolf Press.

@SealeyChallenge @GraywolfPress @maryjobang

#thesealeychallenge2023 #sealeychallenge #poetry

Man I love the moments of interiority.

Some of my favorite moments:

A hand (not mine) covers my mouth. Nature is never fair.

Stop me, the mouth says to the mind.

The only thing that broke the silence was a sound that can’t be made audible outside the brain.

I could tell, time was a migraine heading straight for my right eye.

I have only ever wanted the red sky to turn blue.

[eris · Rating 4 out of 5]

adored the use of voices and perspectives in this collection. bang tries on different selves in different poems, from side character to observer to lead, each embodied with empathy. the collection also does a brilliant job exploring power in relationships and turning inwards, and its references are seamlessly interwoven with bang's own poetic voice.
that said, several poems, particularly in the collection's 4th section, lost me. I kept hesitating in my reading, kept getting distracted when I should've been pulled in, partially because of my own situation, but partially because I felt the poems were losing focus as well.

[katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection grew on me so much as I read it. Every poem layers on top of the last like a croissant - delicious and half (most) of the goodness comes from the layers. I doubt I would enjoy just one poem as much I did them altogether. I feel like this book came at the right time for me since so many things Mary Jo Bang references are things I've recently been reading/thinking about. The Dante quote from a book I'm actively reading oooooh it makes it so scrumptious.

Also highly recommend following up with The Egg by Andy Weir like I did.

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Jo Bang's anthology was a bitter-sweet escape. I say bitter-sweet because her works in the book read like reflections of the self and observations of "the other," whoever that may be. The poet's writing style often reminded me of Gertrude Stein's works that seem to be written with a stream-of-consciousness narrative. Bang's works are either dizzying depictions of ever day life or intricate portraits of her subjects. There is a lot of variety in this anthology. I can't imagine anyone else becoming bored while reading this book.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems where the speaker confronts her life, choices, and reminisces on what could have been.

from Our Evening is Over Us: "There should be no anxiety / in knowing the world will die when we die. / This is how it is with us— // the real is wherever we are. / The days refuse to stay put. Speaking is / a way of living with the ruin we were given."

from This Morning: "My face keeps competing / with the gray of an ocean of grief / pressed into ovals. I know / there will be no coming back // from this."

[Meaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up.
.
Lovely poetry with powerful and beautiful language.
.
My favorites from the collection:
-"Here We All Are with Daphne"
-"The War"
-"This is me when I was busy with my needle"
-"Four Boxes of Everything"
-"This Morning"
-"Hanging the Curtain"
-"What I'm covering over"
-"Everything that was is now owned"
-"Far from Here"
-"Today you're still the photographer"
-"This is what you are, the self says to the self"
-"The Problem of the Present"
-"The Bread, the Butter, the Orange Marmalade"
-"Mistress Mary, Quite"
-"The Trip"
-"Speaking of the future, Hamlet"
-"Once Upon a Time"

[Aether · Rating 3 out of 5]

V interesting! I thought itd be more narrative and in a way it was but it was also very metaphorical. Which sounds like every poetry book ever but it was like I couldnt fully immerse myself in the story of the poems because there were lines of metaphor or interjected images/phrases that seemed spaced apart from the narrative- like it was stretching to connect the narrative to something else and I couldnt see what that was. Very well written tho!

[Gregory Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely worth returning to after a while. Significant themes of identity and finality, and the craft is evident. It is challenging in its obliqueness and fluidity / oscillation. More on that later! …but I loved the classical and scriptural allusions, the nods to non-literary cultural remains, images, and the like.

[Libraryassistant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give her an A+ for titles, the book and many of the poems. I am less sure how to review it overall. I imagine people who relate to the experiences she speaks from will feel it deeply, but I found it to be some really well wrought phrases that I can’t quite grasp where most of it is going.

[Katrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We are all dying but some more than most,/ so says my interiority. It talks to me/ as green fills the screen. It takes my arm/ and walks alongside me. I never ask/ where I’m going. I know I’m not meant to arrive.” - “Here We All Are With Daphne”

[Francesca Morrissey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing. With so many poems in this slim book I expected to enjoy many of them. Trouble is I couldn’t tell you what more than a handful of them might be about. While the poet is great at stringing together mellifluous words, these poems have no substance.

[Lily Poppen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some standouts but struggled a lot with the loftiness of language + many many cultural references that might alienate the reader. Imagery is really superb though and "The Dead of Winter" and "Theory of Personality" were stand-outs.

[Megan Pinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t put it down. And now having finished it, I can’t wait to return & spend more time with the poems.

[Caitlin Buxbaum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some amazing poems in this collection, but also a lot of head scratchers; definitely requires a re-read.