“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"
“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” The New Yorker, March 12, 2007
Published just months before Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2007), this poem reimagines Bruegel’s painting to reflect on themes of loss, absence, and emotional distance. William Carlos Williams, an American modernist poet, also wrote a poem by the same title, and W. H. Auden alluded to the painting in his poem Musée des Beaux Arts. Bang draws a parallel between the mythic fall and personal grief, showing how tragedy often unfolds unnoticed by the world.