{"id":150775,"date":"2021-02-09T13:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T18:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=150775"},"modified":"2021-02-08T13:07:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T18:07:09","slug":"redux-who-walked-unannounced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/02\/09\/redux-who-walked-unannounced\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: Who Walked Unannounced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review\u00a0lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine\u2019s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Maya Angelou.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This week at The Paris Review<\/em>, we\u2019re highlighting work by Black American writers in honor of Black History Month. Read on for Maya Angelou\u2019s Art of Fiction interview<\/a>, John Edgar Wideman\u2019s short story \u201cSightings<\/a>,\u201d and Lucille Clifton\u2019s poem \u201cbouquet<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0The Paris Review<\/em>? Or take advantage of our current subscription offer<\/a>, featuring our stylish new notebook\u2014the perfect place to draft love poems, write your novel, or log your reading list. (And you can always just buy the notebook<\/a>, too!)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction No. 119<\/a>
\nIssue no. 116 (Fall 1990)<\/em><\/p>\n

I try to pull the language in to such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics\u2014New York critics as a rule\u2014who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it\u2019s good but then she\u2019s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work<\/em> at the language.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Carl E. Jepson. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sightings<\/a>
\nBy John Edgar Wideman
\nIssue no. 171 (Fall 2004)<\/em><\/p>\n

The first time it happened I could forgive myself. Cutting across the hall from my office and glimpsing a man\u2014pale, wearing metal-rimmed glasses, a thin man in a light-colored rolled-sleeve shirt and khaki pants, busy with files he was returning or extricating from a chin-high bank of beige metal cabinets lining the wall to my right, just inside the departmental office\u2014nothing unforgivable about being confused a split second by the sight of someone I knew was dead, dead a good long while, dead and buried two thousand miles away in cold, high Wyoming, the dead man Roger Wilson\u2019s office down and across from mine, fourth-floor Bartlett Hall, the dozen years I\u2019d taught at U.W. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Frank Hurley. Courtesy of National Library of Australia from Canberra, Australia. No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

bouquet<\/a>
\nBy Lucille Clifton
\nIssue no. 233 (Summer 2020)<\/em><\/p>\n

i have gathered my losses
\ninto a spray of pain;
\nmy parents, my brother,
\nmy husband, my innocence
\nall clustered together
\ndurable as daisies.
\nnow i add you,
\nlittle love, little
\nflower,
\nwho walked unannounced
\ninto my life
\nand almost blossomed there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you enjoyed the above, don\u2019t forget to subscribe<\/a>! In addition to four print issues per year, you\u2019ll also receive complete digital access to our sixty-seven years\u2019 worth of archives<\/em>. Or take advantage of our current subscription offer<\/a>, featuring our stylish new notebook\u2014the perfect place to draft love poems, write your novel, or log your reading list. (And you can always just buy the notebook<\/a>, too!)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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