Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2021 från The Paris Review

theparisreview.org/poetsatwork *BOOKS SHIP IN EARLY APRIl YEHUDA AMICHAI JOHN ASHBERY FRANK BIDART ELIZABETH BISHOP ALLEN GINSBERG SUSAN HOWE ROBERT LOWELL MARIANNE MOORE PABLO NERUDA EZRA POUND ISHMAEL REED MARK STRAND DEREK WALCOTT The Paris Review is proud to announce the publication of Poets at Work— our latest anthology of interviews. Selected and introduced by poetry editor Vijay Seshadri, the thirteen conversations in Poets at Work have been drawn from the over one hundred Art of Poetry interviews and span the seven-decade history of The Paris Review. Printed in a limited edition with original drawings by Dominique A. Holmes, Poets at Work is available for $20 EXCLUSIVELY from The Paris Review, with all proceeds going to support the magazine.…

The thing about the shape of a bee, which might be why it is often drawn curved around a flower with the black head bowed over the thorax and the knees tucked in lovely and benign as a comma, lucent wings arching from stripes furred to catch pollen blurring with light, is that the shape of the bee is like the honey it makes, sweet, healing, golden-lit from within such that a bee fallen dead on the rug or balled along the base of a window frame still holds the comma shape, and while it may be that bees like to sleep with other bees holding their feet it is not how we think of bees, sleeping like new babies, we think of bees at work, laboring, and maybe that…

401 REQUIEM 1. There’s a sign near the waterfrontI think it’s advertising cheer:says 400 YEARS, VIRGINIA SPIRITS. A swig. A year ago last night, my dead crowd mean even ceremonyof Jamestown, at the schooner that brought those first here.They think: long tripdid not yet know, not the longest part hairpin turns ’head:The exact day’s alignment,if the moon bled that defining night. Wisp of clouds. Was sunsetgolden? I’m sittingyards away. Feel pulling Brooklyn cemetery, southeast. I’d beenwith friends, white fromout of town, just before. We marvel at the dock’s sky hues, pinking, baby’s breath, the water’siris of the narrow, soft cotton scenesatmosphere, the svelte lede. Back, many birds fight for foodat the edge of my homeunderfloor people drywall crates upon anothercomfortably canopyuntil the next storm hits, a sandy conflagration of shore…

This spring, with the world still in on-again, off-again lockdown, our memories of seasons past grow sweeter. The California-based artist Paige Jiyoung Moon makes a practice of recording her memories in paint. Her canvases are ambitious not in scale (no work included here is larger than two feet across), but in their level of minute, prismatic detail. She playfully skews perspective, hovering just above each scene like a ghost revisiting an experience that she won’t allow time to swallow up. Quotidian moments are captured with a jeweler’s eye: her home being spruced up with the help of friends in Painting Day; a cluttered hotel room shared with her parents in Oakhurst Lodge; and in Warm House, an evening with friends in a crowded Seoul bar. How fine Moon’s brushes must…

RISE & SHINE Scraped the last $8.48from the glass jar.Your day’s worth of tips at the nail salon. Enoughfor one hit. Enoughto be good till noon butthese hands alreadyblurring. The money a weird hummingbird caughtin my fingers. I take outthe carton of eggs. Crack four yolks into a sky-blue bowl, spoonthe shells. Scallions hiss in oil. A flickof fish sauce, garlic crushedthe way you taught me. The pan bubblinginto a small possiblesun. I am a decent son. Salt&pepper. A sprigof parsley softened in steam. Done,the plate fogs its ownghost. I draw a smiley face on a napkinwith purple marker.I lace my boots. It doesn’t work so I tuck them in. Closethe back door. Gentlythe birches sway but never touch. The cricketsunhinge their teethin the first light, last syllables cracklinglike a…

Sometimes PB to my students, Sack to my friends, and always Pete to my family, my name is Peter Burgundy and I worry that death has been my only inspiration to be a better person—that death has had a way of making life understandable. And oh whoa, how I worry that this will be the case till kingdom come—walking through every day to the quiet beat of grief’s unfinished heart. Somebody shouldn’t always have to die, right? So let me try with here and now. I’ve been wanting to for a long time and I’m going to do it. So here. This is now: I’m driving to work, and as I make my way down City Park Ave., I’m rerouted by traffic cones and flashing yellow lights. I brake, slowly…

Vnukovo is the smallest, most intimate of Moscow’s airports, and when your flight arrives—especially if it arrives on Saturday at eleven at night—you don’t expect to see much of a crowd. Stamps in the passport, baggage claim—quick and easy. “Where are you coming from?” “Vilnius.” “What’s in the bag?” Nothing special: books, cheese. No food embargo rules violated—entry granted. But then, at the exit, you’re in for a surprise: a phalanx of men. This is the sort of throng that might greet a plane from Tbilisi, but these people don’t look Georgian. And no solicitations either—no “taxi, cheap taxi, taxi into town, very cheap.” It’s eerily quiet. You begin to squeeze your way through the crowd, and there’s no end in sight. The men don’t step aside, but neither do…

Always they find us inappropriate, but today especially so. Here we are with nowhere to go and nothing to do, sitting in a rusty pickup truck, the one leaking oil, the one with the busted transmission that sounds like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Here we are with the engine running for the AC, the doors wide open for our bare legs to spill out. Because this, right here, to survive the heat, this is all we have. An hour ago we became outcasts. One of us—not me—would not shut the fuck up. And since the grandmas are prepping for the monks and need to focus, we’ve been banished outside to choke on traces of manure blown in from the asparagus farms surrounding us, our hometown, this shitty place of boring…

OF the baby, name lost. 1906. Spring born,almond and blackthorn in bloom. Meadowsweet,chickweed, petals of milk on her lips. Spider-silk saliva from mouth to crab apple fists,on Mother’s lap, the train from Kiev to Minskafter the last harvest in Tiegenort. Teething, feverish, pinpricked cheeks, Mother singsKniereiter to distract—bouncing, bouncing baby.Should you fall in the ditch, ravens will feast,ravens will feast. Bitter pip of sick picked up in Riga’s quarantine. Soonthey will slip her little body into the Baltic, wrappedin blue douppioni cut from Mother’s wedding dress, but now she conducts with waving fists, skeins of dawnmist lift from feather grass and knapweed by the tracks,Mother’s soft breath in the cradle of the train car— bouncing, bouncing baby. Should you fallin the sea, should you fall in the sea.Ravens perch in…

Allan Gurganus’s prose exemplifies Evelyn Waugh’s belief that writing, all writing, must be regarded as an exercise in the fresh use of language. In his best-selling debut in 1989, the behemoth showstopper Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (it won the Sue Kaufman Prize and was adapted into both a TV film and a Broadway show); his romping masterwork about aids, Plays Well with Others (1997); two collections of novellas, The Practical Heart (2001) and Local Souls (2013); and two collections of stories, White People (1991) and the new Uncollected Stories (2021), Gurganus has proved that he worships at the altar of the word with an intensity unique among contemporary American fiction writers. Gurganus’s dynamism derives from some unexpected harmonies: a gay man whose work can’t be crammed into the…

STRIKE INTO IT UNASKED Poetry’s “impulse, like electricity, crossing the space, leaves its signature.”—W. S. Graham No wonder that a flash of sparksSpills out from what I touch—the LaserJet, Brimming with static shock,Suspends invisible electron-clouds Across the laser-paper’s Radiant WhiteTo print “The Windhover” Electrostatically—Hopkins’ creation-poem, spelled out In powder-particle black sparks hard-hurledFrom underlying fire— The substrate of his poetryThe veiled fire of Christ, Suffused, incarnate, metaphysical—And poetry is where A bird of prey is teeteringAmong wind-angles Intermittently, a fleckAmid cloud-rhythms, then A flickering along the morning’sDiamond-edged peripheries, At such a height, it’s there—Then not—then there again— Without my realizing it,Between “The Windhover” and me, A space is opened, sparking, live,And I’ve reached through it, unaware It will flame out, will flareIn a split-second of brute force To jump a gap…

Fifty years ago, at a harp recital in Gloucestershire, a retired British military officer with a clipped aristo accent came across a brown-skinned teenager. “I say, old chap, do you speak English?” the officer said. As a story in Yale’s New Journal recounted, the young man—Kwame Anthony Akroma-Ampim Kusi Appiah—replied, “Why don’t you ask my grandmother?” “Who, may I ask, is your grandmother?” the retired officer said. “Lady Cripps.” Lady Cripps was Isobel Cripps, the widow of Sir Stafford Cripps, a Christian socialist and Labour politician who had been chancellor of the exchequer and the Crown’s ambassador to the Soviet Union; he was known for his stalwart desire to relinquish Britain’s imperial possessions, from Calcutta to Accra. In 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, Stafford and Isobel’s daughter…

THE SUPER SADNESS! FEELS LIKE ANGER, WHICH FEELS LIKE Foreskin. A default setting. midnight. Dry eyes. Hesitation at an intersection. Premature adulthood. sheets. Freelancing. Yes maybe. knuckles. Hypervigilance. Corn stubs A sucked-in stomach. Syncing. Infantile embroidery. Showtime. The next step. Primary colors. My pocketbook. Learned behavior. hand gripping. When my grandmother was yesterday but forgot all them years ago. Resolution. Yardsticks. Small talk. An incubator. Groupthink. A Ferris wheel. Melodrama. Accidentally swallowing water at the bottom of a three foot pool. Meaning to swallow water at the bottom of a three foot pool. Not drowning. Sex sometimes. Compulsive eating. A fed family Liquidated compensation. walking up a flight of steps. conditioning. Method acting. Crashing. An accessory. I felt better. Staying together. chafing. Losing my life. candy. The end of “Throw…

SEA:NIGHT SURFINGI N B O L I NAS Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette against detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the falling • swell explodes upward • as the underwave blows through it • a flash of visibility quickly • snuffed by night • the surf fizzling and churning • remitting itself to darkness • with a violent stertor • in competition with no other sounds paddling through dicey backwash • the break zone of • waist-high NW swell • as into a wall of obsidian • indistinguishable from night sky • diving under, paddling fast • and before I sit…

TROTSKY FOR ME WAS Trotsky for me was ridinghigh up on the back of the tractor Trotsky for me was taking a bath nakedwith my little friend in the bathtub. Trotsky for me was ridinghigh up on the bicycle’s handlebars. Trotsky for me was using ash woodto make arrows like those of the Sioux in the Americas. Our family was supposedly Trotskyist.But I didn’t know who Trotsky was. Trotsky for me was climbing the haystacksand crossing the ocean. Trotsky for me was instead of wearing a cross around my neckwearing colored stones. Trotsky for me was seeing in the next roomtwo women sleeping together. Trotsky for me was imagination,ripped T-shirts and the smell of grass. I do know a few others alsoused to do those things. We were not that…

CHAIR When I was small my parents would host a lot of parties. I don’t know if they had more friends then or were just, as people say, “at a more social place in their lives,” but at least once a month there would be a bunch of adults in our apartment, drinking crappy wine and trying to play our untunable piano. There is something powerful for a child about your parents having people over. It’s not anything that happens at the parties but the evidence they give you that people feel safe where you live. That must go back to the savanna. Sometimes things happened at the parties that I was probably too young to see, but nothing scarring, just grown-up scenes. The air was bluish with different kinds…

FEVER OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN 1. A storm of buzzards is circling outside the windowof my hospital room, looking south and east across the rivertoward the high-rise construction cranes downtown.They are a regular sight in December, buzzards migratingin particulate vortices, slow-moving gyres that resemble,from a distance, glassless, black-feathered snow globes.Satin-hemmed sheaths of cloud shuttle across the sky,diffuse silver light alternating with bursts of Florida sun,the occasional spatter of raindrops from a stringof unseasonable storms parading up from the Gulf,cars composing a stop-and-go stream of metalparallel to the river, small Caribbean freighters dockedalong quaysides of cabbage palms and crab traps,I can see it all with great clarity, the birds, the traffic,it’s effortless—the doctor in the eye clinicspoke enviously of my vision, better than 20/20,even at my rapidly advancing middle age.The bad news…

The widow arrived at LaGuardia on a Sunday, but the rumors about the woman who had rented a big apartment, sight unseen, had taken an earlier flight. We had already reviewed, on many occasions and in hushed tones, in the quiet that comes after long hours of visiting, what little we knew about the widow and her dead husband. About her life in the old country, we asked the obvious questions: Were there children? Cheryl heard from a friend who still lived in the Dominican Republic that they had only been married a year when he died. Had her husband been rich? No, our sources in the old country said, poor as a church mouse, with a big family to support out in el campo. Had the husband been handsome?…

from “PARROT EYES LUST” for Elliot Helfer Do potatoes suffer? Would it be newwith a blue pen? This lightweightfuturisticslightly minimalistblack Germanfountain pen The Lamy Safari The alphabetwith my name insertedblack against red the same asCaxton’s Missal Should I look that up? Constraintconstraintit ain’twhat you think The ship sinksrather quickly Why were they sailing so far north? Kate Winslet concedesit isn’t her best work The knife on the counterblade side up Wherein the wordis the theory? Me, Ijust tend toblurt things out Editing function at fancy dinnerMust not be barbarian “raised by wolves”is an insult to wolves the boy wanders in from the forest which I no longer even rememberexcept when I look in the mirror& see the animal there fancy fauxleather carrying casejust for the tweezersthat inevitablyare lost First berry, best…

LETTERS IN WINTER There is not one leaf left on that treeon which a bird sits this Christmas morning, the sky heavy with snow that never arrives,the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast nothingness, it’s easy to feel afraid,overlooked by something that was meant to endure. It’s difficult today to think clearlythrough pain, some actual, most imagined; future pain I try lamelyto prepare myself for by turning your voice over in my mind, or imagining the dayI’ll no longer hug my father, his grip tentative but desperate all the same.At the café, a woman describes lilacs in her garden. She is speaking of spring,the life after this one. The first thing to go when I shut the book between usis the book; silence, its own alphabet, and still something…

KENDRA ALLEN is the author of the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet. A book of poems, The Collection Plate, will be published by Ecco this summer. SHERI BENNING’s fourth collection of poetry, Field Requiem, is forthcoming from Carcanet. ROSANNA BRUNO is a visual artist based in New York. Her first book, The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson, was published in 2017. PEYTON BURGESS is the author of The Fry Pans Aren’t Sufficing and a graduate of New York University’s M.F.A. program in creative writing. ANNE CARSON was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. YOHANCA DELGADO’s fiction appears in One Story, A Public Space, Story, and other publications. BORIS DRALYUK is a translator, the editor in chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and…