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The Last Two Seconds: Poems
The eagerly awaited new poetry collection by Mary Jo Bang, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
We were told that the cloud cover was a blanket
about to settle into the shape of the present
which, if we wanted to imagine it
as a person, would undoubtedly look startled―
as after a verbal berating
or in advance of a light pistol whipping.
The camera came and went, came and went,
like a masked man trying to light a too-damp fuse.
The crew was acting like a litter of mimics
trying to make a killing.
Anything to fill the vacuum of time.
―from "The Doomsday Clock" The Last Two Seconds is an astonishing confrontation with time―our experience of it as measured out by our perceptions, our lives, and our machines. In these poems, full of vivid imagery and imaginative logic, Mary Jo Bang captures the difficulties inherent in being human in the twenty-first century, when we set our watches by nuclear disasters, species collapse, pollution, mounting inequalities, warring nations, and our own mortality. This is brilliant and profound work by an essential poet of our time.
We were told that the cloud cover was a blanket
about to settle into the shape of the present
which, if we wanted to imagine it
as a person, would undoubtedly look startled―
as after a verbal berating
or in advance of a light pistol whipping.
The camera came and went, came and went,
like a masked man trying to light a too-damp fuse.
The crew was acting like a litter of mimics
trying to make a killing.
Anything to fill the vacuum of time.
―from "The Doomsday Clock" The Last Two Seconds is an astonishing confrontation with time―our experience of it as measured out by our perceptions, our lives, and our machines. In these poems, full of vivid imagery and imaginative logic, Mary Jo Bang captures the difficulties inherent in being human in the twenty-first century, when we set our watches by nuclear disasters, species collapse, pollution, mounting inequalities, warring nations, and our own mortality. This is brilliant and profound work by an essential poet of our time.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2015
12 people are currently reading
425 people want to read
About the author
Mary Jo Bang
38 books85 followersMary 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
December 2, 2017
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
The rotational earth, the resting for seconds:
hemisphere one meets hemisphere two,
thoughts twist apart at the center seam.
Everything inside is.
Cyndi Lauper and I both fall into pure emptiness.
That’s one way to think: I think I am right now.
We have no past we won’t reach back—
The clock ticks like the nails of a foiled dog
chasing a faster rabbit across a glass expanse.
A wheel of fortune spins on its side,
stops and starts. The stopped time
is no longer time, only an illusion that says,
I can have this, and this, and this.
Cyndi says nothing works like that.
There is no all-purpose plastic totem
that acts like a bouncer holding back the fact
that at least once a day you look up:
it’s the self you kept in a suitcase holding the key,
coming to meet you, every cell a node
in a network of ongoing doubling. Cyndi says
the world expands but always keeps us in it.
For every you, there’s a riot grrrl in prison
in Putin’s Russia. You know the self dissolves
and when it does—no figure, all ground,
like a surface seen microscopically—
you fill the frame and explode,
a rubber-wound inside unraveling and becoming
a measurement of whatever exits. It’s like sleep,
if sleep were a film that didn’t include you, but no,
whatever is happening, you are always in it,
the indispensable point of view.
Proof of that is that a lift force brings you back
and you wake, back to your face, hands, mirror
image in the bed next to you, Ketamine moment
where kinesthesia is secondary to everything
is possible: you and you and you and now and
you and yes and you with the night-self singing
backup. Onstage, the fractured future of a world
which is the world with the scaffolding folded
and laid on top of this night. All through it.
Until it ends or else begins again. Meanwhile,
that indefatigable wavering between
what you want and what you get for wanting.
A TECHNICAL DRAWING OF THE MOMENT
Before the monument becomes remote
and unapproachable, a made-up anecdote
of easy adoration, pressed into marble
or a more modern plastic, let’s ask ourselves,
What is myth? And further, is it better
to dispel or debunk one, or instead
should we embrace the petty mechanistic
hope that invents it? Are we not ridiculous,
torn in two between the true
and what we’d so like to believe is true?
It’s exactly there, right where we keep our wishes,
that our fake animals act as a code
for what we think of as enlightenment. There,
a tiger’s faux hide pretends to be a pelt that says,
This was my life. And so it was,
since a symbol is nothing but an illustration
of obsession, concern, focus, and an atlas
of where one wishes to have been
or fears one someday will go.
Color can add detail to the expanse between
the short but bright beginning of an era
and a mottled much longer after.
History moves in under the glass-top
where from a safe distance we can watch it
become our keeper and contentious tormenter.
I admit to being frightened, or better,
ill at ease, with what I don’t know but can see:
the instinct for power that some people have.
The rotational earth, the resting for seconds:
hemisphere one meets hemisphere two,
thoughts twist apart at the center seam.
Everything inside is.
Cyndi Lauper and I both fall into pure emptiness.
That’s one way to think: I think I am right now.
We have no past we won’t reach back—
The clock ticks like the nails of a foiled dog
chasing a faster rabbit across a glass expanse.
A wheel of fortune spins on its side,
stops and starts. The stopped time
is no longer time, only an illusion that says,
I can have this, and this, and this.
Cyndi says nothing works like that.
There is no all-purpose plastic totem
that acts like a bouncer holding back the fact
that at least once a day you look up:
it’s the self you kept in a suitcase holding the key,
coming to meet you, every cell a node
in a network of ongoing doubling. Cyndi says
the world expands but always keeps us in it.
For every you, there’s a riot grrrl in prison
in Putin’s Russia. You know the self dissolves
and when it does—no figure, all ground,
like a surface seen microscopically—
you fill the frame and explode,
a rubber-wound inside unraveling and becoming
a measurement of whatever exits. It’s like sleep,
if sleep were a film that didn’t include you, but no,
whatever is happening, you are always in it,
the indispensable point of view.
Proof of that is that a lift force brings you back
and you wake, back to your face, hands, mirror
image in the bed next to you, Ketamine moment
where kinesthesia is secondary to everything
is possible: you and you and you and now and
you and yes and you with the night-self singing
backup. Onstage, the fractured future of a world
which is the world with the scaffolding folded
and laid on top of this night. All through it.
Until it ends or else begins again. Meanwhile,
that indefatigable wavering between
what you want and what you get for wanting.
A TECHNICAL DRAWING OF THE MOMENT
Before the monument becomes remote
and unapproachable, a made-up anecdote
of easy adoration, pressed into marble
or a more modern plastic, let’s ask ourselves,
What is myth? And further, is it better
to dispel or debunk one, or instead
should we embrace the petty mechanistic
hope that invents it? Are we not ridiculous,
torn in two between the true
and what we’d so like to believe is true?
It’s exactly there, right where we keep our wishes,
that our fake animals act as a code
for what we think of as enlightenment. There,
a tiger’s faux hide pretends to be a pelt that says,
This was my life. And so it was,
since a symbol is nothing but an illustration
of obsession, concern, focus, and an atlas
of where one wishes to have been
or fears one someday will go.
Color can add detail to the expanse between
the short but bright beginning of an era
and a mottled much longer after.
History moves in under the glass-top
where from a safe distance we can watch it
become our keeper and contentious tormenter.
I admit to being frightened, or better,
ill at ease, with what I don’t know but can see:
the instinct for power that some people have.
April 17, 2017
I've only recently started to really start reading poetry, and I absolutely love the raw imagery and moments of self reflection. "Death without life. Terror. Fear. Disaster. / Punishment. Profound darkness. Evening./ She walked to the window: sky,/ clouds coming into the room./ How odd, she thought, to be. " I'm not quite sure I understand all of this, but I do know I would love to read any more of her work.
April 3, 2015
This book is a wild ride. Mary Jo Bang creates off-the-wall images and is at times cynical of our presence on earth. “…the buildings teetering before falling / the way ideologies might sway back and forth / as if they were preserved in a glass tower / that was about to be toppled.” However, the book has its moments of vulnerability and inward reflection such as, “I think that chaos fascinates me. I say, / I am a part of that, one of the characters in the cage.” Mary Jo Bang dabbles in varied form and the book even consists of a few prose poems. She also draws from literary and historical figures such as Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and Cleopatra. This book of poetry is a vision of cynical chaos and the resonance is not far from, “The descent of small-town darkness.”
Review by Bradly Brandt
Review by Bradly Brandt
July 19, 2025
(* 7/25 edit*)
The re-read wasn't as kind, and the godawful cover made it difficult to have it off the shelf for so long. Still, there were several bangers I took note of:
An Autopsy of an Era
A Calculation Based on Figures in a Scene
The Blank of Reason Produces Blank: After Goya
A Structure of Repeating Units
Worn
I think she's best when she goes full metal, bleak shit. I wish she would go further with it.
(*Original review*)
The more I read other contemporary poets, the more I like this book. She's not writing the same quaint bullshit.
The first stanza of "The Elastic Moment":
Ice in a glass at the height of a heat wave.
Then a sleep lull that sends you
to the airless inside of a Halloween hat.
Goodnight.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The re-read wasn't as kind, and the godawful cover made it difficult to have it off the shelf for so long. Still, there were several bangers I took note of:
An Autopsy of an Era
A Calculation Based on Figures in a Scene
The Blank of Reason Produces Blank: After Goya
A Structure of Repeating Units
Worn
I think she's best when she goes full metal, bleak shit. I wish she would go further with it.
(*Original review*)
The more I read other contemporary poets, the more I like this book. She's not writing the same quaint bullshit.
The first stanza of "The Elastic Moment":
Ice in a glass at the height of a heat wave.
Then a sleep lull that sends you
to the airless inside of a Halloween hat.
Goodnight.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
March 18, 2015
This was just not my kind of poetry. She has a great eye for images and ear for language; her poetry is carefully constructed and never cliche. But it leaves me absolutely cold. Nothing here for me to hold onto.
I dislike the way she weaves together multiple images instead of focusing on one central one. Sometimes I have read this done in a compelling way, but not here, unfortunately. It came across as disjointed rather than as cohesive.
She clearly knows what she is doing but I just could not enjoy these. Too bad; I loved her Inferno translation and was hoping she would be a new favorite of mine!
I dislike the way she weaves together multiple images instead of focusing on one central one. Sometimes I have read this done in a compelling way, but not here, unfortunately. It came across as disjointed rather than as cohesive.
She clearly knows what she is doing but I just could not enjoy these. Too bad; I loved her Inferno translation and was hoping she would be a new favorite of mine!
September 23, 2019
3.5 stars
If you're looking for heartwarming and hopeful poetry to distract you from doomsday and the looming collapse of the world... this collection is not for you. Throughout this book, Bang makes heavy use of sentence fragments and repetition, creating a list of anxiety-inducing aspects of the world and creating a sense that we are just moving through our lives, talking and noticing, but ultimately not having a long-lasting impact that can salvage our planet and society. Still, I think this was an important collection for me to read, as it forces me to think of my life and my own poetry on a larger scope.
Through these poems, Bang elicited the fact that poems, ultimately cannot alter the world, and yet it seems to be all that she can offer. Even though I romanticize the notion of poetry and think it's something that everyone should take time to pursue, I cannot believe that a poem or the best piece of writing is miraculous enough to save the world and change the entire trajectory of humankind. At its best, writing can only nudge or jumpstart a conversation. Is that enough to aim for, or should writing be doing more?
I am reminded of an E.E. Cummings poem, humanity i love you, in which Cummings laments that humans are writing poems in the face of death, as if the words have salvific power. After reading The Last Two Minutes I'm left wondering what more we can do with our lives rather than simply observe and record. We must admit, confess, and act or else our lives are empty.
My two favorite poems from this collection were The Too-Bright Light Will Wash You Out and Two Frames. From the latter:
"You found yourself wishing
again (didn't you?) for some Polaroid moment
of the past when girls always sunned under umbrellas
and mascara stayed where you wanted it to. I can tell you that
will never happen again. We're post-postmodern—in the city,
anyway. We know where we are going and it isn't back and forth.
We want and light comes. We call what we want what we need."
If you're looking for heartwarming and hopeful poetry to distract you from doomsday and the looming collapse of the world... this collection is not for you. Throughout this book, Bang makes heavy use of sentence fragments and repetition, creating a list of anxiety-inducing aspects of the world and creating a sense that we are just moving through our lives, talking and noticing, but ultimately not having a long-lasting impact that can salvage our planet and society. Still, I think this was an important collection for me to read, as it forces me to think of my life and my own poetry on a larger scope.
Through these poems, Bang elicited the fact that poems, ultimately cannot alter the world, and yet it seems to be all that she can offer. Even though I romanticize the notion of poetry and think it's something that everyone should take time to pursue, I cannot believe that a poem or the best piece of writing is miraculous enough to save the world and change the entire trajectory of humankind. At its best, writing can only nudge or jumpstart a conversation. Is that enough to aim for, or should writing be doing more?
I am reminded of an E.E. Cummings poem, humanity i love you, in which Cummings laments that humans are writing poems in the face of death, as if the words have salvific power. After reading The Last Two Minutes I'm left wondering what more we can do with our lives rather than simply observe and record. We must admit, confess, and act or else our lives are empty.
My two favorite poems from this collection were The Too-Bright Light Will Wash You Out and Two Frames. From the latter:
"You found yourself wishing
again (didn't you?) for some Polaroid moment
of the past when girls always sunned under umbrellas
and mascara stayed where you wanted it to. I can tell you that
will never happen again. We're post-postmodern—in the city,
anyway. We know where we are going and it isn't back and forth.
We want and light comes. We call what we want what we need."
January 3, 2019
"And now the question: what do we do with the longing
for what can destroy us? You're free to think:
logic can change even the most obstinate person; or
even logic cannot change the most obstinate person."
-from "The Earthquake in this Case Was"
The collection is a tough nut to crack at the start, but Bang teaches you how to read her poems over the course of the first twenty pages. The narratives are dense and they don't seem to care too much if they're impenetrable at times--not unlike the Jorie Graham swagger, vacillating dangerously between mystery and elitism. But there are many transcendent moments and images in the book in the midst of the thick philosophical wool. The wool is frustrating, but it isn't necessarily bad.
for what can destroy us? You're free to think:
logic can change even the most obstinate person; or
even logic cannot change the most obstinate person."
-from "The Earthquake in this Case Was"
The collection is a tough nut to crack at the start, but Bang teaches you how to read her poems over the course of the first twenty pages. The narratives are dense and they don't seem to care too much if they're impenetrable at times--not unlike the Jorie Graham swagger, vacillating dangerously between mystery and elitism. But there are many transcendent moments and images in the book in the midst of the thick philosophical wool. The wool is frustrating, but it isn't necessarily bad.
October 1, 2017
I struggled with this and (not for the first time) resented the tyranny of the rating system. Mary Jo Bang is a fantastically accomplished poet. I greatly admired her translation of the Inferno. But the fact is that this simply didn’t sing to me, at this point, in this place, and I’m at a loss as to how to explain why. So, 4 *. But I experienced it as a “3”.
April 21, 2018
Beautiful lines. A few poems I thought were astounding. Overall, I just didn't connect with this book the way I hoped I would. Still, worth reading, and at no point did I feel an urge to give up. It was insightful enough that I'll pick up others of her books, though.
January 17, 2025
Mostly a dreamlike mode, which I happily savored in a couple dozen pages per night before bedtime. Abut halfway through there are little clusters that feel more narrative, at least by comparison, and these are thrilling. Maybe there is more of that as you go in toward the end.
June 16, 2025
I think I read this before...I know I've seen it in the library several time. Catchy cover and title, but man I had a lotta trouble following this. I'm not saying it's bad; it just probably wasn't meant for me.
January 16, 2020
Interesting at times from a noted Dante translator.
September 12, 2021
I don't really have a review for this one. It's a really intelligent and thought-provoking collection of poems, but it was hard to get into the poems because I wasn't particularly taken to the style.
September 14, 2021
“Darkness is only a relative
index of many other aspects of the way light behaves.” — “Reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”
index of many other aspects of the way light behaves.” — “Reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”
October 12, 2021
3 1/2 stars.
December 10, 2021
I am a big Mary Oliver, Jo Harjoe and Nikki Giovanni fan....
July 16, 2023
absolutely stylish & so very dreadful poems about the anxiety of automation. i watch a clock become my mind. there will be no stopping this empty terror
November 27, 2023
Di ko bet, ang ganda ng mga tula technically saka imagery-wise pero wala akong maramdaman. Lol.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 31, 2025
Just not the book for me.
May 11, 2025
Extensiveness of the notes makes me think maybe these just went over my head, but though the language was interesting and craft is definitely there, they just felt empty
June 7, 2015
i struggled to rate this because i read it in a bit of a hurry, though maybe i was supposed to. the central focus of the collection seemed to be time: specifically how we're running out of it. much of the imagery folded neatly into this idea. some of the poems seemed acutely aware of what "absence" meant and employed interesting imagery to fill the vacancy. many of the poems, however, were just kind of there. as soon as i would get a foothold into them, they either ended or changed direction. i felt bang was at her best in the couple of pieces she broke into longer series.
November 6, 2015
I find this collection entirely opaque, and the end notes don't help. The problem here is syntax, the folding and refolding of thought. It's like reading a closed carpenter's ruler. Rhythm would help. Or a surprising turn of phrase. But the language here is peculiarly lifeless, as if to highlight the line of thought which, to my eye at least, is too crooked to be read with anything like pleasure or recognition.
October 7, 2015
This book was good, but not great. There are a few 'great' moments, it is consistently intelligent, funny, and subtle but never really transcends into something truly touching. It is very much in the style of late 20th century academic poetry... a little less difficult and overstuffed than something like Paul Muldoon, but in the same vein.
June 6, 2016
I dislike this author's work intensely. I read Elegy and appreciated the subject matter, but this--along with everything else that I've tried--feels more like a vocabulary display than poetry, to me. I actually had to stop reading all together for a few days after I was through with this, just to clear my head.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 23, 2015
This recent volume of poems is well-done but not all that
satisfying to this reader. Mostly a grim tone with a lot
of language play. Cleverly done. Deals with Moments, Time,
and Identity. From a series called "Let's Say Yes": "The
body was busy thinking, conjuring/the museum of the moment."
satisfying to this reader. Mostly a grim tone with a lot
of language play. Cleverly done. Deals with Moments, Time,
and Identity. From a series called "Let's Say Yes": "The
body was busy thinking, conjuring/the museum of the moment."
September 8, 2023
Unfortunately I just didn't care for this collection of poems. I wanted to be pulled into them but none did that and I found myself drifting or skimming as I read. Just not the book of poetry for me I guess. =/
Read
April 22, 2015I picked this poem book because the students will be able to relate and maybe write their own poems based off of these poems in this book.
August 30, 2015
This collection just wasn't for me. I enjoyed the imagery and use of language as I was reading each poem, but it left me as soon as I started the next one.
April 28, 2016
First Edition, 2015, Graywolf Press, paper
Black Sun, 4/22/2016, 16.00, New
Read: 4/28/2016
Black Sun, 4/22/2016, 16.00, New
Read: 4/28/2016
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2017
Just to clarify...this collection is intelligently/eloquently written. However, it just wasn't the kind of poetry I enjoy reading.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews