Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by signing up for the Redux newsletter.  

John Edgar Wideman

For daylight saving time, we bring you some inspiration for rising early from John Edgar Wideman, a story about timelessness by Gail Godwin, and, to remind you that you’re not the only one, Jascha Kessler’s poem “On Forgetting to Set My Alarm Clock.”

John Edgar Wideman, The Art of Fiction No. 171
Issue no. 161 (Spring 2002)

When I’m doing the brute work, I do it early in the morning; that’s the best time for me to get the stuff down on the page. That’s been my routine for years and years … Up early before everybody else, before I get connected, before I get bugged, before I have obligations. Get the writing done first, then be the person I want to be in other ways after that.

Some Side Effects of Time Travel 
By Gail Godwin
Issue no. 54 (Summer 1972)

He had a right to that poem. Gretchen had been waiting all during summer school to hear him eulogize that, his, our, her lost world. Where is the Horse? Where is the horserider? Where is the giver of rings? Alas, that space of time has gone, become dark under cover of night, as though it had never been.

Once to wake proud in a burst of sunlight
as bearing news of real significance,
to risk cold coffee for this native hour
unembarrassed at much cruel rapture
and clothed with an astonished nakedness
the other animals must remember …