July 2, 2014 Bulletin Both Sides of Your Brain, Both Sides of the Pond By The Paris Review The Paris Review is where America goes for the best in new fiction; The London Review of Books is where Europe goes for bold critical essays. Now, for a limited time only, you can receive a year of The London Review of Books and The Paris Review for $60. Bring your hemispheres together: subscribe today.
July 1, 2014 Bulletin Your Summer Reading, Sorted By The Paris Review We’re delighted to announce a summer-long joint subscription deal with The London Review of Books. For sixty years, The Paris Review has published what’s best and most original in American writing; since 1979, The London Review of Books has set a standard for long-form literary journalism, with essays that examine every aspect of world culture. Now, for a limited time only, you can get a year’s subscription to both magazines for one low price: $60 U.S. It’s reading for all seasons, starting today. Subscribe now!
June 12, 2014 Bulletin Constant Freshness By Dan Piepenbring A manuscript page from “Reading Rorty and Paul Celan One Morning in Early June,” an unpublished—or at least unpublished ca. 1989—poem by Charles Wright. Congratulations to Charles Wright, who was announced today as America’s next poet laureate. James Billington, the librarian of Congress, said that Wright’s poems have “an infinite array of beautiful words reflected with constant freshness” and commended his “combination of literary elegance and genuine humility—it’s just the rare alchemy of a great poet.” Wright has received, as the Times notes, “just about every other honor in the poetry world, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.” The Paris Review interviewed Charles Wright in 1989 for the Art of Poetry series; he said of the form, There seem to me to be certain absolutes in whatever field of endeavor one is in. In business and banking they may be availability and convertibility, security and safekeeping, minimal loss and steady, incremental accession. I don’t think it’s that way in poetry, though such values will get you to temporary high places. Brilliance is what you reach for, language that has a life of its own, seriousness of subject matter beyond the momentary gasp and glitter, a willingness to take on what’s difficult and beautiful, a willingness to be different and abstract, a willingness to put on the hair shirt and go into the desert and sit still, and listen hard, and write it down, and tell no one. We’re happy to have published six of Wright’s poems in our Summer 2008 issue. Here’s one of them, “In Memory of the Natural World”: Four ducks on the pond tonight, the fifth one MIA. A fly, a smaller than normal fly, Is mapping his way through sun-strikes across my window. Behind him, as though at attention, the pine trees hold their breaths. The fly’s real, the trees are real, And the ducks. But the glass is artificial, and it’s on fire. We wish Wright all the best in his new role.
June 4, 2014 Bulletin Welcome Our Writer-in-Residence By Dan Piepenbring Courtesy of Yale University Press We’re delighted to announce that Ansel Elkins will be our second Writer-in-Residence—and our first poet—at the Standard, East Village, in downtown Manhattan. She will be in residence for three weeks this July. We wish her a happy and productive stay. Ansel is the recipient of a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the 2012 North American Review James Hearst Poetry Prize, the 2012 Fugue Poetry Prize, and the 2011 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Believer, Best New Poets, Ecotone, The Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina. If you’re not familiar with our residency series: biannually in January and July, writers with books under contract are selected by The Paris Review and the Standard for a complimentary three-week stay at the newly refurbished Standard, East Village. We also wish to congratulate our three finalists: Andrew Forsthoefel, Ken Kalfus, and Chinelo Okparanta, each of whom will receive two nights at the Standard, East Village. Because even writers sometimes need a weekend on the town.
June 2, 2014 Bulletin Take a Walk with Our Summer Issue By The Paris Review That adorable canine on the cover is Boo, a shaggy brown Brussels griffon and an habitué of our old loft on White Street. Boo’s owner (and portraitist) is Raymond Pettibon, whose portfolio, “Real Dogs in Space,” is at the center of issue 209, fit for consumption in the dog days of summer. Then there’s our interview with Joy Williams—whose stories have appeared in The Paris Review since 1969—on the Art of Fiction: What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes—which is Wallace Stevens, I think. As a form, the short story is hardly divine, though all excellent art has its mystery, its spiritual rhythm. And in the Art of Poetry No. 98, Henri Cole discusses his approach to clichés (“I like the idea of going right up to the edge of cliché and then stopping”), his collages, and his contempt for the sentimental: Oh, I hate sentimentality. Heterosexual men are more susceptible to it than women, because middle age keeps telling them they’re gods. This is not true for women, however, who are often discarded. Is it possible that we can more readily see the bleakness of the human condition if life has been a little harder for us? Nothing kills art faster than sentimentality. There’s also an essay by Andrea Barrett; fiction from Zadie Smith, J. D. Daniels, Garth Greenwell, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Shelly Oria; the third installment of Rachel Cusk’s novel Outline, with illustrations by Samantha Hahn; and new poems by Henri Cole, Charles Simic, Ange Mlinko, Nick Laird, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Les Murray, Adam Kirsch, Jane Hirshfield, and Thomas Sayers Ellis. It’s an issue that, like Boo, commands immediate and frequent affection, and will keep you enthralled for years to come. Subscribe now!
June 2, 2014 Bulletin Keep on Pushing By Dan Piepenbring We’re delighted to announce that two of our contributors have won Pushcart Prizes: Ottessa Moshfegh, for “The Weirdos,” a story from issue 206; and Susan Stewart for her poem “Pine,” from issue 207. Both pieces are available online, and both will appear this November in Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses, an anthology of this year’s winning writing. Congratulations to Ottessa and Susan!