Indholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i The Paris Review

SARAH MANGUSO I. For years I could barely write a page. I thought I was becoming a virtuoso of smallness while the grief, which is wordless, occupied an ever-greater volume. My friend lived in the estates on the bad side of town. Let’s go to the forest, she said when I went over to play. There were three trees in the yard, but if you know where to stand, you can get lost in a forest of three trees. She could do it. She had to. Her mother died when we were nine. When I was an “emerging” artist I wanted only to finish emerging. But not knowing what I would become, not knowing the circumference of my life—I never expected to solve those mysteries, and once they were solved,…

PRESUMPTION OF HEAVEN The dry, black branches of winter seen in flight run singing. Come here to drink translucent drops on fresh leaves. Come over here, and try to light that wick. If you descend from the summit, humming, perhaps I can see you, perhaps at the river’s curve I can find again the water of the oasis spilling between leaves of poplars, and there is a nest that sings among the willows. But no. Clearly. The clear water spills over and sinks into the Spring itself, water in water. The hole in the center is made by the wind. Neither you nor I can stop that annihilation, neither you nor I. It adorns the edge, you know that water also trembles. You carried the highest Soul up there, and…

EMILY HUNT KIVEL The situation in itself is not unique. There was a man who hated his job and wanted a new one. There was a man who was sick of his boring job and wanted an exciting job instead. This man was depressed, but he saw a way out. He thought this way out was a distantly Rilkean change of life. Not his whole life. Really, just his job. How he spent his days, occupied his mind, set goals long-term and short. The man wanted to embrace a buried part of himself, see the edges of his mind glimmer under an unknown light; wanted the blind and transcendental experience of losing himself to some craft; wanted to make art. This man had a wife who was concerned. The wife’s…

DENVER TO MONTANA BEGINNING 27 MAY 72 West of Laramie, Elk Mt. snow covered top—Medicine Bow Mts. ranged black—that Road still ribbons past red sandstone buttes—“Looks like you shd be a yogi on each rock”—down the vast green valley floor Like Utah, like America, mountain rookeries cliffed distant under cloudfished transparent sky—the Blue Shield, that might be heaven over the Ferris Mountains’ precipices (illustration) striped under snow dusty pine ridges. Great Divide Basin up Rt. 287 grey mud lake at Muddy Gap—Rock wall leaned up from colossal ditch, smooth stone sheet cracked by brush upsprung—Rattlesnake Range rocks bunched up in mountain piles north blue sky’d—Dry wood snowfences snaked straight up hill south of the highway, wood slats x’d together. Overhill, dinosaur snouts, blue rock brains—Sweetwater River meandering under split rock…

NONBEING Should the gusts of wind come this way then tell them There’s nothing here that they could take away with them There’s nothing here that someone could look at and think:If only this were ours, too There’s no traveler here, no destination, There’s no darkness here, nor illumination, there’s nothing here Here the burning footfalls of time are advancing one after the other Scorching everything, enflaming everything, erasing everything, Teaching everything that nothing is gained from living Should the gusts of wind come this way then tell them All these temples, these cities and villages Are just traces of the story of life But having gone to each door and looked, Having trampled every wall, having thought every window a heart, I learned this secret: Everywhere the burning footfalls…

MARGARET JULL COSTA Margaret Jull Costa is a name revered in some circles and utterly unknown in others, yet more readers have fallen under the spell of her words than realize it. The greatest translator of Portuguese literature into English, she has taken on Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, and António Lobo Antunes, and lent her refined style to two giants of the late nineteenth century, José Maria Eça de Queirós and his Brazilian contemporary Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. From Spanish, Jull Costa often translates her generational peers, prominent writers such as Álvaro Pombo, Luisa Valenzuela, and Enrique Vila-Matas, while accompanying Javier Marías and Bernardo Atxaga for their entire careers. A translator cannot live on the canon alone, and her singularly prolific body of work—an astounding 130 titles—includes best-selling authors…

ARCHAEOPTERYX you’re home. eating lentils. talking to yourloved one. you’re abroad. eating lentils. talking toyour loved one. you’re not yourself. you’ve been stolen.you’re talking to your lentils. you’re not a knife, not cotton.talking to your loved one. you forgot how to talkand forgot how to hang in the closet. you forgotthe letter p in the receit. you’re talking to cotton.it doesn’t answer. its life was not for you.a lot. too much. although there is never too much.you’re anywhere. eating lentils. talking to.she doesn’t answer. she went everywhere you went.she flew. when you fly—you can’t cry. you’retalking to her. she doesn’t answer. but there weretwo rooms. you didn’t know where. you wentanywhere. no one was drawing your loved one there.just a manuscript in the bottom drawer of the desk.and its feathers…

CRATER OF THE BEGINNING Crater of the beginning, mud of death, endless wreckage, is this your world, the serpent you forged over seven long nights? You were freshness in a well of cloistered water and the wondrous balance of sky over earth. I reject those hands, your fundamental bitterness, these corrodible eyes. Just one day for you to build the world, but you came from the rib of man and on his side continue to drown. SEPTEMBER Sudden September thunderstorm then long wearisome rains; still on the beach the fresh rush of waves; the indifference of fallen medronho fruits and the sudden grave look of a two-year-old son; vines that bleed, grapes reaching their end; some leaves down and trees, like flowers, awaiting the quiet flight of insects and the…

ROBERT HASS Robert Hass read poetry early on, but he first imagined being a fiction writer. And though he would become known around the world for his poems—sometimes giving them titles like “Novella” and “A Story about the Body”—his first publication was a piece of prose fiction in a Faulknerian vein, printed in his college magazine. Later, his dissertation at Stanford combined an analysis of the nineteenth-century novel with an inquiry into economic ideology, work that provided him cover for a private and steadily growing love for poetry. Hass went on to become a renowned professor of poetry, but would still teach, from time to time, courses on narrative film, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, or, recently, Nabokov and Naipaul. His own story begins in 1941, when he was born the second…

POEM TO MY YELLOW COAT today i mourn my coat.my old potato.my yellow mother.my horse with buttons.my rind.today she split her skinlike a snake,refusing to excuse my backfor being bigfor being oldfor reaching toward othercuffs and sleeves.she cracked like a whip andfell apart,my terrible teacher to the end;to hell with the arms you wantshe hissed,be glad when you’re coldfor the arms you have. BOUQUET i have gathered my lossesinto a spray of pain;my parents, my brother,my husband, my innocenceall clustered togetherdurable as daisies.now i add you,little love, littleflower,who walked unannouncedinto my lifeand almost blossomed there.…

FAKE MONEY After my friend and I left the tobacco shop, he carefully sorted his loose change; slipped some small gold coins in his left jacket pocket; into the right went the silver pieces; in his left pants pocket, a handful of centimes; and in the right, a silver two-franc piece he inspected closely. I wondered about this odd distribution of coins. In the street we came across a beggar, cap in hand, pleading for loose change. Nothing is harder for me to refuse than the mute eloquence of a mendicant’s eyes, implying humility while issuing reproach. It’s the same complex emotion you might find in the eyes of a whipped dog whimpering. My friend made an even larger donation than I, and so I said, “The element of surprise…

JAMEL BRINKLEY My sister threw open the door so that it banged against the little console table she kept by the entrance. “Silas,” she said breathlessly, before even removing her coat, “I have to tell you something.” Which was enough to make me feel trapped, as though the words out of her mouth were expanding and filling up the space in her tiny apartment. I told her to calm down and apologized, and then I began making excuses for myself. I had assumed she would be angry at me because of the previous night, so I was primed for what she might say when she got home from work. “Don’t be so defensive,” Bernice said. “I’m not talking about that.” She tapped my legs so I would move them and…

1. I never kept sheep,But it’s as if I had.My soul is like a shepherd,It knows the wind and the sunAnd walks hand in hand with the Seasons,Following and looking.All the peace of peopleless NatureComes to sit by my side.But I feel as sad as a sunset isTo our imagination,When we see it fading in the distanceAnd feel the night enterLike a butterfly through the open window. But my sadness is soothingBecause it’s natural and rightAnd is what should be there in the soulWhen it already thinks it existsAnd our hands pick flowers without the soul even noticing. With a clanking of sheep bellsBeyond the bend in the road,My thoughts are contented.I’m only sorry to know they’re contented,Because if I didn’t know that,Instead of being contented and sad,They would be…

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821–1867) was a French poet and essayist. His collection of prose poems Le spleen de Paris—also titled Petits poèmes en prose—was published in 1869. JAMEL BRINKLEY is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories. SUSAN MARGARET BROWN is a translator and literary critic. She has translated such writers as Antonio Osorio and Fernando Pessoa. Her work appears in The Broome Street Review, Dispatches, and Pessoa Plural. ALBERTO CAEIRO was a heteronym used by Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), a prolific Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, and translator who created more than a hundred aliases. He also wrote in English and French. LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936–2010) was an American poet, writer, and educator. She won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2000 and in 2010 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal,…

BUD SMITH A day after we made our suicide pact, the bank sent a yellow letter saying we’d lose our house. That night, instead of just killing ourselves, Monique and I set the place on fire. It was easy to start. A mountain of rags soaked in turpentine. Up it went, a solitary match. I ducked outside. The garage door came down on its automatic track. We sat in the truck and watched the house the way we used to watch the creature feature at the drive-in. It was like waiting for drugs to kick in, giddy and impatient, doubtful. But then the smoke puffed out the garage door where the weather seal was bad and we exhaled. Our shotguns were on our laps, loaded, ready to go. It would…

AFTER YOU O my seventh year, the year I turned sevenO wondrous moment of departureAfter you everything that happened happened in a mass of craziness andinsanity After you the window that had been such a vivid and bright connectionbetween the bird and usbetween the wind and usbrokebrokebroke After you that clay doll that said nothingnothing but water, water, waterdrowned in water After you we killed the voice of the cicadaand became attachedto the school bell that tolled above the sound of ABC’sand to the whistle of factories After you our play space that had been under the table movedfrom under the tablesto behind the desksand from behind the desksto the tops of the desksand we played on tabletops and lostwe lost your colors, O my seventh year After you we…

FRANCESCA COLUSSI The tradition of embroidering postcards began with the souvenir trade of the early twentieth century. The themes of these World War I–era collectibles are mainly patriotic and touchingly sentimental, having been stitched by women on the western front for soldiers writing home. These small canvases still charm and delight us in this very different age, the evidence of the human hand in this tactile format appealing to our senses and drawing us in. Several years ago, textile designer Francesca Colussi found herself disenchanted by the unsustainable culture of the commercial fashion industry. Looking for something more gratifying, she returned to experiments she’d once made with embroidery on vintage postcards. She picked up her needle again and hasn’t looked back. Her process of discovery revealed a personal preference for…

OTTESSA MOSHFEGH The application to Waverley Glen Academy required that I spend a day sitting in on freshman classes and mixing with the student body to see how well I’d fit in. I was twelve. Picture the gleaming wooden corridors, the Persian rugs, the monogrammed silverware, the primrose and daffodil in the window boxes. Hear the clattering of shoes on the terra-cotta tile in the courtyard, the gentle chimes signaling the hour, and so on. I remember a warm, gentle breeze and the view of Amesbury Park’s weeping willows through the open French doors of the garret art studio where I sketched a wooden bowl of fruit, or was it an old leather satchel? It could have been a naked man. I don’t remember what was taught in the classes…

NO HOME IN WORDS no name, no grave, no homethe nameless sung by the nameless and add to that no soundsilent, but loud the sky opens awhile waves at the depths of deep silence swelling already rise up to yourself SEE THE SMOKE IN THE BOTTLE, THE SAIL IN THE BOTTLE the idea is like a boat sliding byread pearls, beginning to rollinternal cries of cliffs beginning to resemble the sea in the bottle of a conceptstern faces move along one by onerowed by many oars picasso’s fingers all wear prison uniformsto paint an emptiness a huge hand knitthe head tied to the mast was the first to see it the front disappears in the bottle it’s uncommonly quiet, as in the sand the key remains curious about the tides…

AMY SILVERBERG I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey, and my landlord said he was around my age. I’d never met him even though his apartment was apparently only twelve minutes away. I lived on the bottom floor of her dilapidated duplex; she lived upstairs. Every night I’d fall asleep to the sound of her feet shuffling across the thin wood floor above me. I slept with my bedroom windows open, hoping for a breeze to carry in the burned-air smell of the city. Instead, my landlord would wake me up in…

Cover: courtesy of Francesca Colussi. Pages 40–69, courtesy of Robert Hass; page 70, © 1998 by Fred Viebahn; page 73, © 1996 by Jock McDonald; page 77, © 2007 by Miriam Berkley; pages 106–23, courtesy of Francesca Colussi; pages 124, 139, courtesy of the Allen Ginsberg Estate; pages 176–201, courtesy of Margaret Jull Costa; page 206, © Gary Doak/Alamy Stock Photo. Special thanks to Didi Chang-Park and Jordan Karnes for their help with the transcription of Robert Hass, “The Art of Poetry No. 108.” Allen Ginsberg’s “Denver to Montana Beginning 27 May 72” is published with permission of the Allen Ginsberg Estate, with final editing by David Cope and Jim Cohn, and supplemental queries by Michael Schumacher. It will appear in The Fall of America Journal, edited by Michael Schumacher…