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The Daily

 

  • First Person

    Wild Things

    By

     

    Somewhere between Kardashian news and a blog detailing where to buy every outfit worn by Taylor Swift I hit rock bottom. In the space between where I wanted to be—asleep—and where I was stuck—awake—I had chosen the easiest route, whiling away the ink-black night, slack-jawed and blindly clicking through whatever late-night gossip lit up the computer screen.

    The air was thick with heat on that sticky July night. No air trickled through the window screen. I was in a stupor, the particular sort of stupor that meant that nothing registered, that my reflexes were slow. I was vulnerable, mentally asleep, and regretfully awake. And I was hearing noises.

    We had just moved to the country. I was used to city life, city noises, city nerves. In the city, you steel yourself for danger, but there’s a comfort to being in a populated area, close to neighbors and cops. The bucolic loneliness of the country offers promises of peace, but to me, it’s sinister. You’re the only person screaming for miles around. Read More

  • Arts & Culture

    A Partial List of Things John Berryman Found Delicious

    By

    Berryman-Paris-Review-600

    • Saul Bellow’s “Leaving the Yellow House”[1]
    • His own poetry[2]
    • Autolycus of The Winter’s Tale, deemed an “irrelevance”[3]
    • “Bunny,” met in London[4]
    • The Irish, who “all speak English and are blazing with self-respect”[5]
    • A stone[6]
    • A breeze[7]
    • Theodore Roethke’s detail[8]
    • A tribute, written by T. S. Eliot, about Ralph Hodgson[9]
    • Dialogue in Don Quixote[10]
    • An unspecified “new taste sensation”[11]
    • Your “end”[12]
    • An unspecified “author,” also “rational & passionate”[13]
    • The body of a married woman, seen in a restaurant[14]
    • His friend Ernest Milton Halliday’s marks at Columbia University[15]
    • Risk[16]

    [1] Saul Bellow’s foreward to Recovery/Delusions, Etc.
    [2] Saul Bellow’s foreward to Recovery/Delusions, Etc.
    [3] Berryman’s Shakespeare
    [4] Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman
    [5] Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman
    [6] “Dream Song 121”
    [7] “Dream Song 339”
    [8] Freedom of the Poet
    [9] Freedom of the Poet
    [10] Freedom of the Poet
    [11] “Gislebertus’ Eve”
    [12] “Shirley & Auden”
    [13] “A Prayer for the Self”
    [14] “Dream Song 4”
    [15] John Berryman and the Thirties: A Memoir
    [16] Stephen Crane

    Elon Green is a freelance writer who oftentimes contributes to The Awl.