Summer 2020

The Paris Review

The world's preeminent literary magazine.

The Paris Review1 min read
The Paris Review
Editor Emily Nemens Managing Editor Hasan Altaf Online Editor Nadja Spiegelman Assistant Online Editor Brian Ransom Assistant Editor Lauren Kane Poetry Editor Vijay Seshadri Art Editor Charlotte Strick Southern Editor John Jeremiah Sullivan London Ed
The Paris Review10 min read
Perfection
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
The Paris Review1 min read
Three Poems by António Osório
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 fundam
The Paris Review18 min read
Violets
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 w
The Paris Review1 min read
Silvia Guerra
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 cur
The Paris Review43 min read
The Art of Poetry No. 108
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
The Paris Review3 min read
Two Poems by Forough Farrokhzad
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 Paris Review24 min read
The Juggler’s Wife
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 wa
The Paris Review1 min read
Two Poems by Lucille Clifton
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 apa
The Paris Review2 min read
Wishing You Were Here
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
The Paris Review3 min read
Two Poems by Charles Baudelaire
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 si
The Paris Review18 min read
Allen Ginsberg
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 cliffe
The Paris Review14 min read
I Was a Public Schooler
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 si
The Paris Review1 min read
Miraji
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
The Paris Review26 min read
Witness
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 tho
The Paris Review1 min read
Four Poems by Duo Duo
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 the idea is like a boat sliding byread pearls, beginnin
The Paris Review3 min read
Three Poems by Alberto Caeiro
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
The Paris Review30 min read
The Art of Translation No. 7
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 P
The Paris Review22 min read
The Duplex
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,
The Paris Review1 min read
Two Poems by Kęstutis Navakas
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 forg
The Paris Review3 min read
Contributors
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
The Paris Review6 min read
Credits
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

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