Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2019 från The Paris Review

The Paris Review lost a dear friend when Susannah Hunnewell, the publisher of the magazine, passed away on June 15. Susannah and I were once invited to a party. We met in the park at sunset and she decided, on a lark, that we should take a horse-drawn carriage. She kept asking the driver to make another turn, go farther uptown, east, then south and back, it was so beautiful, the buildings in the gold light towering around us. I’d lived in New York for twelve years but never ridden in a carriage. Much of the time I spent with Susannah was in a kind of enchantment, talking about the small literary magazine that we cared about inordinately. We surprised ourselves by how personal this journal became to us, how…

ALICE McDERMOTT Before I met Alice McDermott, I’d heard a story: when her students became distracted with excitement after she won the National Book Award for Charming Billy (1998), she settled the class down by offering a hundred dollars to anyone who remembered the last winner. As the rumor went, she kept her money. Not one M.F.A. student of fiction could recall the winner or the book (Charles Frazier, for Cold Mountain). This is a revealing wager from a writer as recognized by awards committees as McDermott; her novel That Night (1987) was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Pulitzer Prize; At Weddings and Wakes (1992) was also a finalist for the Pulitzer. Charming Billy won an American Book Award as well as the National…

IF BY YOU YOU MEAN WE The apples are early this year, & the grass is late. The taxi isEarly & the past is late. The fist is late. The tooth—like the news Of the tooth—broke both early & late. I’m telling you: this allReally happened. I had a love I ripped through like it was bread. I had bread & cheese, apples & sugar on my every plate.A sugar rose on my every cake. A love like a water Ring soaked into the grain of my kitchen table. Sugar, I don’t need itRefinished. The way it happened, I was my own witness. When we was Together / everything was so grand. I love you like the fifty-two bones of the feet,The fifty-four of the hands, the hell & the…

LIVES We have them, and live and think about them, But then, what are they? Some seem like Bigger deals than the rest, like those of big enchiladas Or the CEOs of banks too big to fail, but why? Some seem Meaningful for their commitments and accomplishments, As no doubt they are, though most are unexceptional And ordinary, and just fine for that. They’re all equal In value, but what that means is difficult to say: That each one matters more than anything To whoever’s life it is, though each is barely real To anyone else? The world exists before and after it, Yet while it breathes it is the world, its world. Whenever I attempt to gesture at it, all I find are words For where I am: this…

TWELVE-YEAR UNIVERSAL HOROSCOPE Key: A Aires, T Taurus, G Gemini, C Cancer, L Leo, V Virgo, Li Libra, S Scorpio, Sa Sagittarius, Ca Capricorn, Aq Aquarius, P Pisces. Each section covers one year, then rotates. A2019, T2020, G2021, C2022, L2023, V2024, Li2025, S2026, Sa2027, Ca2028, Aq2029, P2030 Anticipated reversals occur in unanticipated locations: avoid planar surfaces. As Saturn and Pluto come into alignment, prepare for irrepressible nostalgia. Casual attachments provide a medley of diversions from long-term fantasies. Mix of sulfur and magnesium is at its height on the twelfth and twenty-ninth: stay clear of disarticulating headwinds while remaining open to miscalibrated address. Seek pine-and-coconut-flavored dishes. Preferred alcohol: Anisette (neat). T19, G20, C21, L22, V23, Li24, S25, Sa26, Ca27, Aq28, P29, A30 Reach out to long-estranged family members to say life…

In my teen years, when everything felt all mixed up with the incessant Auckland rain, I found solace in ballet class, where there were rules for every step. And beyond the rules: mystery. I pored over books and magazines: page after page of ballerinas onstage or in studios, touching almost nothing but light and air. Ballet itself I understood as a fierce and complex art. Yet image after image insisted on only the ethereal. As I looked, I imagined myself doing whatever the dancer was doing; I yearned to do it with my own body, or to keep practicing until I could. Though I didn’t know how to describe it, I would have liked to see a ballerina responding to the day-to-day, physical world; to see the grace and astonishment…

BLOOD HISTORY The things that abandon you get remembered different.As precise as the English language can be, with wordslike penultimate and perseverate, there is not a combinationof sounds that describes only that leaving. Once,drinking & smoking with buddies, a friend asked ifI’d longed for a father. Had he said wanted, I would havedismissed him in the way that the youth dismiss it all:a shrug, sarcasm, a jab to his stomach, laughter.But he said longing. & in a different place, I mighthave wept. Said, Once, my father lived with us & then hedidn’t & it fucked me up so much I never thought abouthis leaving until I held my own son in my arms & onlynow speak on it. A man who drank Boone’s Farm & MadDog like water once told…

MICHAEL HOFMANN It’s a little strange to encounter Michael Hofmann in Gainesville. He has taught creative writing for over twenty years at the University of Florida, whose sprawling campus is dominated on its northern edge by a football stadium, the Swamp, where orange-and-blue Gators chomp their unlucky opponents. A short drive from there, you can pick your way past dozens of real gators, dusky green and preternaturally still, in the Paynes Prairie Preserve, which is also home to herds of wild horses and bison. How the bison got to Florida, and why they stayed, must be an interesting story. In one of Hofmann’s few Gainesville poems, “Freebird,” written after his first visit in 1990, he quotes D. H. Lawrence: “One forms not the faintest inward attachment, especially here in America.”…

POEM REVISED IN A TWELFTH - FLOOR HOTEL ROOM AFTER SEEING A MAN IN THE BUILDING ACROSS THE STREET HOLDING WHAT APPEARED TO BE BINOCULARS The baby sings in her high chairat the banquet I know most people at this table,but not everyone. The keynote speaker talksabout how to make beauty in today’s world. A womanwe met during cocktails whispersthat she wants a picture of the baby. Ray would say no. He thinks he can protect her, but I don’t. Sure, I say. Go ahead. The baby sings in her high chair.An artist at our table doodles a sketch and gives it to me. “Princess Callie,” reads the caption.Thanks, I say.This will go up on her wall. A man approaches when the keynote is done. Your daughter is beautiful. I…

ANUK ARUDPRAGASAM It was a little past four in the afternoon, the light softer now and more diffuse, the intensity of the day’s heat beginning to wane, and standing by himself in a corner of the garden Krishan was observing the people gathered in Rani’s house for the funeral, somewhat unnerved, after his long and meditative journey, by how quickly he’d found himself in this place so different from his point of origin, this setting that, despite conforming to all his abstract expectations, had nevertheless managed to catch him off guard. The sense of calm, peaceful self-containment he’d felt on the train had remained with him on the bus during the quiet, two-hour ride from the Kilinochchi station, and it had persisted too on his walk from the bus stop,…

THE MOLTEN SAINTS INSIDE ME DO NOT QUIET Like an alarm I can’t shut off, the summer.Like air raid sirens stuck onthe world is burning, the world is burning& I can’t stop it. Can’t stop ash from the reddening sky falling dry onto grass, onto cloverlit purple at their tips. Mouth level.My cheek muscles the ground. I can’t hear anything here. I can’t hearthem but I know, around me,forests are not quiet as they burn. As they burn, the saints inside memake their noise. Degrees, decibelsrising. When will I listen?To emergency, when will I be true? Already ash flecks my arms, gathersin my open ear its slowpress. Where is my pilgrimage, myprotest? When will I get up? Get up, they say. The sun fumes pink.My saints pour through me, blarethrough…

SONOMA I’m a sad case, really: little things please me. I drove 50 miles to buy a birthday present.Why: not so much bigheartednessas pleasure in the process— thinking up some thing I’d like there to be;locating a guy; persuading him to fashion it;solving a problem of no consequence. It’s the little things—something to do,someone to do it for. Not driving the 50miles to Sonoma; having the 50 miles to drive. IN FAIRNESS I see now I was 50 percent to blame.That’s right. And, because I value fairness,I’ll apologize for leaving youalone with my dad that time we sprang him from Bellevueand took him down the street to get a slice.He got the itch to bring someone to tears,and where the hell was I? When I got backfrom the restroom, you…

HIRED The Grand Am’s window rolled down but it was too dark out to see in: a hand waved me over, a voice asked if I wanted to make some quick cash standing right where I was standing for the next ten minutes, simple as that. Just stand here? I said. Simple as that, the voice said, and the hand stretched out a twenty. It was weirdly humiliating, doing what I was already doing. Like being told to act natural on camera and sensing that who you are is failing to entertain. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. I’d never made so much in such little time, never been so nervous doing nothing. I kept needing the car to come back, some sign it was over: a horn, a gunshot, the…

CAUSTIC DRUMS Quarry in coldrain, standing poolsof slurry below sheer faces, inertmachines (wheels tricklingrust at the lugs) at therim, fox curledantithetic in briars. SEETHING FOR A LONG TIME Ovo in regolithscumbled, awake ona rectangle mirror hatched and positedlying flat, scars’graven burrs sanded off in the—reflection or original?—gradual failure of. TOTAL DRAG Claustrophobic trumpet vinetired of citylife no choice but to fripthe fire escapefate afforded slowly temporizing the sunwould denounce noslipshod green hornblende. PLANTER’S PUNCH Rain constant hoursshadowy bamboos crowningveranda handsome, exotic men and exotic,beautiful women pantto subvert reality of and raiseyellow goats—throwshunched shoulders crave.…

In the fall of 1985, the writer William Styron fell into a deep depression. The author of celebrated novels such as The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) and Sophie’s Choice (1979), he ceased writing that autumn and entered a period of intense brooding and near-suicidal despair. He was admitted to the neurological unit of Yale–New Haven Hospital on December 14 and stayed there for almost seven weeks. Rest and treatment allowed him to regain his equilibrium; he returned to his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, in early February, and by that summer was writing again. The untitled novel from which “Spiral” is taken was begun in spring 1988 and represents Styron’s first attempt to address the subject of depression. The narrator of this novel, Paul Whitehurst, is a successful playwright, famous…

OLIVIA CLARE Mary Ann lived near me in Baton Rouge, then she was in Memphis. She’d told me they could never return. Return to this life, she meant. Her husband, Knox, I’d hated, and he’d been called, of all things, a kind man. People called him good, gentlemanly, liked to say it just that way. Her mother had. But he took Mary Ann from me, and I don’t let myself near swindlers. She did not die with me. She died with Knox, and such a fast thing tells me this is how a life can run, gone to a Memphis firmament. We’d first met in the Goodwood Library at the crowded bank of computers, Mary Ann in a cold metal wheelchair she paid seventy-five dollars a week to rent. I…

AFTER CALLIM ACHUS Epigrams, 56 When I began writing I felt like a constellation,some new fixture in the sky, a lamp with twenty wicks, or at leastan eternal flame. It was mostly a lie I told myself, though a fewof my friends bought in. Now look at me. I am, at best,a little candle under glass, a strip of magnesium you mightignite for a demonstration in chemistry class, or else a meteorite, fastbecoming invisible, something you’d point out to a child, a faintthing everyone knows can’t last. AFTER CALLIM ACHUS Iambi, 203 I’m not exactly from poverty, or from obscurity,but I think it’s okay for me to complain. Some people treat the right, or the abilityto make, or to talk about, poetry as a matter of being born in the…

ANUK ARUDPRAGASAM is the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage. He is at work on his second novel. MATTHEW BAKER is the author of the story collection Hybrid Creatures. His forthcoming book, Why Visit America, will be published in spring 2020 by Henry Holt. CHARLES BERNSTEIN is the winner of the 2019 Bollingen Prize. He is the author of Near/Miss and Pitch of Poetry. REGINALD DWAYNE BE T TS is the author of four books. Felon, his latest collection of poetry, will be published by Norton in the fall. STEPHANIE BURT is the author of several books of poetry and literary criticism. Her collection After Callimachus will appear from Princeton in 2020. ANDERS CARLSON-WEE is the author of The Low Passions. He is the winner of the 2017…

I HAVE VOTED The dogs tipped the garbage and the meat spilled outthe larger dog sniffed itthe smaller stood to the side and growled the meat quivered on the floorI’d kept it too long it wasslick and fat it had expired all this while I stood in lineand then the ballot machine glowed greenlyyes yes yes I told it while the large dog licked the meatlifted it gingerly with its mouthdropped it wetly to the floor and America I said walking home fromthe high school gymnasiumI love you I am your son I have voted while the two dogs circled the messgrowling oh my beautiful country a bolt gunreduces an animal instantly to unconsciousness no painsays the handbook called Bolt StunningTechniques for Cattle— Draw an X from the topsof the…

DIANE WILLIAMS I took a step further to meet Horace for health, for love, for a leg up. And at Horace’s everything was gray there with some white accents—and the walls were gray, not paint. They were hung with fabric and he had a gray carpet on the floor. Once, before I knew him well, I asked Horace to dinner, and after that he was always saying he’d be right over for a chicken dinner, but usually I visited him in his apartment across the street. His place was very tidy and a bit surprising. He showed me his sword cane and the living room features an owl that’s made of poultry feathers. This is a snowy owl that contains no real owl parts, but when I saw it for…

LEIGH NEWMAN Last week, I finally had to put Howl Palace up for sale. Years of poor financial planning had led to this decision, and I tried to take some comfort in my agent’s belief in a buyer who might show up with an all-cash offer. My agent is a highly organized, sensible woman who grew up in Alaska—I checked—but when she advertised the listing, she failed to mention her description on the internet. “Attractively priced tear-down with plane dock and amazing lake views,” she wrote under the photo. “Investment potential.” I am still puzzled as to why the word teardown upset me. Anybody who buys a house on Diamond Lake brings in a backhoe and razes the place to rubble. The mud along the shoreline wreaks havoc with foundations,…

MANSPLAINING In the middle of making love, he coileda handful of my hair around his fist and wrenchedmy head up off the bed, cocked it to forcemy gaze down to where his body entered.Thus suspended over the field of flesh, pale field of our makinglove without love, and now, moresurprising to me, without lust,far beyond the range of tenderness, this breadthof snow with no red bird flying through,he could aim my gaze at his,not as a lover seeking pleasure in his lover’s pleasurebut as a man who neededto be certain I was paying attention,mansplaining that we were fucking.Do you like it? Do you see it? he asked.So I nodded, close to laughter,to show good humor, to not be soalone, but after seconds in his unrelaxed grip,I assumed the mask I…

SECRET READING MATTER I take the books left for free recycling mainly for their smell,I stick my nose among the pages, into business not my own,then stroll around someone else’s home,peeping into their kitchen and their bedroom. But oncetheir smell has faded and the book’s imbued with mine,I leave it at a bus stop or in a mailbox.Busy nonstop with their crimes, their love lives,good and evil, keeping an eye on the timeand the setting, the characters haven’t a clue how many booksthey’re carrying away in their clothing. HALL OF MIRRORS It’s very dangerous to knowtoo many words. Each of them has itsflip side, whichalso has its flip sideand so on ad infinitum. A mirrored hall of words. The sad side of happinessand the sad side of sorrow. Words with…

SLEEP These days sleep comesto me only throughthe aid of three white pills.Every nightI repeat the magicwords aloud—melatonin,magnesium, ashwagandharoot and leaf extractplus magnolia barkextract that containshonokiol and magnolol.Pharmaceutical lullaby.Charm to conjuresleep’s surepure white oblivion.I sleep so soundI don’t rememberany dreams. Exceptthe recurring one in whichmy brother lies dying.Jennie, his care providerfor the past seventeen years,FaceTimes me so I can saygoodbye from nine hundredmiles away. His gaunt,drawn face. A doe’s mutebrown eyes. White skinagainst white pillow. His fewstrands of stray hair fineas milkweed silk.His head a splitdried pod whose seedswind will scatter.“Michael, goodbye.”I cradle himbetween my palms,brother the sizeof my cell phone’s screen.Brother with Downsyndrome, who have onlya handful of words—yes, no,garage, that’s right—to get you throughthis life and die,you say nothing.You smile to see meon Jennie’s cell phone.My eyes wellsalt…

MOXOMENON Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises. Vol. 2 (1683–84), the first known manual of printing I. J. M. begins his book,Every thought taken up from the block with a rollOf the ball and inked on the form,A Craft of the Hand which cannot be taught by Words:“I thought to have given these ExercisesThe title of Doctrine of Handy-Crafts but when I consideredThe true meaning of the word I found the DoctrineWould not bear it, therefore I shall not undertakeThat with the bare reading any shall be able to …”Is it not plain we cannot be taughtAnything but knowledge? he writes, I use to writeWith Pen and Ink lest afterwardsI might be troubled with recollections,But who knows the theory and practice which best pleaseGod as far as words are concerned. II. I…

MATTHEW BAKER THE ORIGINS OF THIS GREAT NATION There wasn’t anything special about us. We were just an average town. Porch swings, wading pools, split rail fences, pump jacks bobbing for oil on the horizon. Meetings at town hall were well attended, sure, but we weren’t some hotbed of insurgents. We didn’t subscribe to any one brand of politics. We couldn’t even be plotted onto your basic left/right binary. Our town had everything: pro-lifers who supported gay marriage, pro-choicers who opposed gay marriage, climate change deniers who owned solar panels, universal health care campaigners who preferred private insurance, creationists with degrees in biology and geology, loyal conservatives, staunch liberals, moderates, radicals, and ornery retirees whose only real issue was guns. And yet that winter we found ourselves united by a…