{"id":128507,"date":"2018-08-14T13:41:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T17:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=128507"},"modified":"2018-08-14T13:41:32","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T17:41:32","slug":"redux-help-me-find-my-spaceman-lover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/14\/redux-help-me-find-my-spaceman-lover\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of<\/em>\u00a0The Paris Review\u00a0lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine\u2019s archive. You can have these unlocked\u00a0pieces delivered straight to your inbox every\u00a0Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blast into The Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s archive with\u00a0Allen Ginsberg\u2019s 1966 Art of Poetry interview<\/a>, where he recounts his spacey hallucinations;\u00a0Robert Olen Butler\u2019s story\u00a0\u201c\u2009\u2018Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover\u2019<\/a>\u2009\u201d; and\u00a0Cynthia Zarin\u2019s poem \u201cSaturn<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allen Ginsberg, The Art of Poetry No. 8<\/a>
\nIssue no. 37 (Spring 1966)<\/em><\/p>\n

If I close my eyes on hallucinogens, I get a vision of great scaly dragons in outer space, they\u2019re winding slowly and eating their own tails. Sometimes my skin and all the room seem sparkling with scales, and it\u2019s all made out of serpent stuff. And as if the whole illusion of life were made of reptile dream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cHelp Me Find My Spaceman Lover\u201d<\/a>
\nBy Robert Olen Butler
\nIssue no. 140\u00a0(Fall 1996)<\/em><\/p>\n

I never thought I could fall for a spaceman. I mean, you see them in the newspaper and they kind of give you the willies, all skinny and hairless and wiggly-looking, and if you touched one, even to shake hands, you just know it would be like when you were about fifteen and you were with an earth boy and you were sweet on him but there was this thing he wanted, and you finally said okay, but only rub-a-dub, which is what we called it around these parts when I was younger, and it was the first time ever that you touched . . . well, you know what I\u2019m talking about. Anyway, that\u2019s what it\u2019s always seemed like to me with spacemen, and most everybody around here feels about the same way, I\u2019m sure. Folks in Bovary, Alabama, and environs\u2014by which I mean the KOA camp off the interstate and the new trailer park out past the quarry\u2014everybody in Bovary is used to people being a certain way, to look at and to talk to and so forth. Take my daddy. When I showed him a few years ago in the newspaper how a spaceman had endorsed Bill Clinton for president and they had a picture of a spaceman standing there next to Bill Clinton\u2014without any visible clothes on, by the way \u2014the space man, that is, not Bill Clinton, though I wouldn\u2019t put it past him, to tell the truth, and I\u2019m not surprised at anything they might do over in Little Rock. But I showed my daddy the newspaper and he took a look at the spaceman and he snorted and said that he wasn\u2019t surprised people like that was supporting the Democrats, people like that don\u2019t even look American, and I said no, Daddy, he\u2019s a spaceman, and he said people like that don\u2019t even look human, and I said no, Daddy, he\u2019s not human, and my daddy said, that\u2019s what I\u2019m saying, make him get a job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saturn<\/a>
\nBy Cynthia Zarin
\nIssue no. 105 (Winter 1987)<\/em><\/p>\n

The father of two silver medal figure skaters
\nsaid, \u201cWhen they were eight and ten, I built a rink, twenty
\nby forty in the yard, without a fence. There was nothing
\nfor them to hold on to . . . knew they were stars right away.\u201d
\nAt night, off Central Park, the Planetarium turns<\/p>\n

up its closed, calcified, tyrannosaurus eye to
\nsomething other, not heraldic heaven, where Saturn,
\nlonely (we think), anthemless, has rings of whizzing ice
\nthat just last week astronomers thought were wider. But some
\nare only ten feet thick. Not much more than a stellar \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe<\/a> to read the entire archive?\u00a0You\u2019ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Subscribe to our mailing list<\/h2>\n
Email address:
\n<\/div>\n
\n

The Paris Review <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n