August 30, 2016 Look That’s Why We’re Running Away By Caitlin Love Sebastian Blanck’s new exhibition, “That’s Why We’re Running Away,” opened last week at Wetterling Gallery. Blanck, known for his intimate portraits of family and friends, has focused his latest work on landscape. The exhibition closes October 1. Sebastian Blanck, Blinding Light, 2016. Read More
August 30, 2016 Our Correspondents Godspeed, Sweet Intent By Anthony Madrid Hunting the sound stack in the rondels of D’Orléans. Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair (detail), oil on canvas, 1852–55. In the March 1915 issue of Poetry magazine (page 254), the following poem appeared for the first time in print: IMAGE FROM D’ORLEANS Young men riding in the street In the bright new season Spur without reason, Causing their steeds to leap. And at the pace they keep Their horses’ armored feet Strike sparks from the cobbled street In the bright new season. I first encountered it, seventy or seventy-five years later, in Personæ: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound. I did not know at that time whether d’Orléans was a person or a place, nor did I look into it. I was charmed by the poem—more than I knew—but there were many pieces in Personæ that interested me more. By the time I turned thirty, I could recite at least two dozen of Pound’s shorter poems from memory. “Image from D’Orleans” was not one of them. Read More
August 30, 2016 At Work Women at Work: Irina Reyn and Emily Barton in Conversation By Irina Reyn and Emily Barton From left: Irina Reyn, Emily Barton. Last month, after her reading at the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock, New York, Irina Reyn sat down for an onstage conversation with the novelist Emily Barton. Reyn had read from her new novel, The Imperial Wife, in which two women—Catherine the Great in eighteenth-century Russia and Tanya in contemporary New York—negotiate marriage and ambition, on two very different registers. Barton’s third novel, The Book of Esther, was also published this summer. It imagines a nation of Turkic warrior Jews transposed from the Middle Ages to World War II–era Europe and follows one woman’s Joan of Arc–style quest to defend her people. Unsurprisingly, the conversation quickly became a lively discussion about the writing of both novels, gender and work, and the standing of women in the current political climate. —Ed. Read More
August 30, 2016 On the Shelf Raising Poets from the Dead, and Other News By Jonathon Sturgeon Ouija board. Photo: Dave Winer. Given our newfangled penchant for the darker arts, it’s probably time for a James Merrill revival. I do not mean this literally: we should not raise James Merrill from the dead. Still, we might commune with him. To aid our spiritual discourse, Dwight Garner points out, we should turn to the Ouija board, the supposedly harmless instrument Merrill used to write The Changing Light at Sandover. As it happens, Merrill’s own biographer, Langdon Hammer, recently dusted off his Ouija, although he was too ravaged by paradox to contact the poet: “We didn’t try [to commune with Merrill]. I guess it seemed beside the point. Who had invited us to the table and sat us down at the board if not James Merrill? We were already in contact … Looking back now, I think the board had a point to make. Using it puts you in touch with the soul. But it’s not the soul as we normally think of it—something singular and deep inside you. According to the Ouija board, it takes two people to create the soul, and it exists out there, between and beyond them.” Read More
August 29, 2016 Bulletin #ReadEverywhere, Even When You Can’t Breathe By The Paris Review It’s your last chance, folks: you have two more days to get a joint subscription to The Paris Review and the London Review of Books for just $70 U.S. (Already a Paris Review subscriber? Not a problem: we’ll extend your subscription to The Paris Review for another year, and your LRB subscription will begin immediately.) We’re also closing the third edition of our popular #ReadEverywhere contest. The rules: post a photo or video of yourself (or your friends, children, or pets) reading The Paris Review or the London Review of Books on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest and use the #ReadEverywhere hashtag and one of our magazines’ handles. Clearly, it’s possible to read in absolutely any environment, even one in which you’re deprived of oxygen. The winner of the contest will receive a wide selection of Aēsop products. For inspiration, take a look at last year’s winners or see what this year’s competition has cooked up. Now get yourself a joint subscription, head outdoors, and hashtag your way to victory. Time is almost up.
August 29, 2016 Our Correspondents Father Daniel Berrigan: Poet, Priest, Prophet By Nathan Gelgud Read More