“The Star’s Whole Secret,” The New Yorker
Item
- Title
- “The Star’s Whole Secret,” The New Yorker
- Description
- This poem features Louise and Ham—recurring characters in Bang’s collection Louise in Love (Grove Press, 2001). Their dialogue stages interiority as a kind of performance where Louise reflects on will through the image of the “mill moth” and the “lavish wick.” Bang uses persona to externalize the inner life, allowing her characters to reveal their interiority.
- Date
- 1998-06-01
- Type
- Clippings
- Format
- paper
- jpg
- Creator
- Bang, Mary Jo, 1946-
- Publisher
- The New Yorker
- Source
- Mary Jo Bang Papers
- Identifier
- ms154-s11_6-b89-f19-001.jpg
- ms154-s11_6-b89-f19-003.jpg
- ms154-s11_6-b89-f19-004.jpg
- Rights
- In Copyright
Bang, Mary Jo, 1946-. “The Star’s Whole Secret,” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 1998, Some days, everything is a machine: The Poetic Practices of Mary Jo Bang, accessed March 13, 2026, https://digitalexhibits.library.wustl.edu/s/born-digital-poetry-exhibit/item/59772