DAWN IS BRIGHT DUSK IS DIM DOOM IS INBETWEEN You are not asleep. You are a photograph of sleep. You are in a movie of actors acting as if asleep. You are in a movie of actors really sleeping. You may be dreaming of sleep. You may be a person dreaming that he is a person sleeping. You are in a state the locals have convinced you is sleep. This is imitation sleep. Passing itself
The Announcement A bird came to see me once, a talking magpie that said, This will happen— and I didn’t so much agree as think, why me? It was arbitrary, as far as I could see. Ordinary—being at hand and being asked to do whatever needs doing. Steadfast as a tattoo that can’t be washed off. A castle that isn’t mine reminds me that this was not my idea, especially considering how inevitable death is,
TAKE 4 The cat has barfed in the hall, the laundry threatens avalanche, the kids are pounding the bedroom door, clamoring for lunch. There is simply no time for proper porn. Enter the sex GIF: glorious, animated snippet of smooth, heaving bodies, played on endless loop. The sex GIF is perfectly engineered for time-crunch titillation. A sneaking glance at one’s phone during the daily grind is all one needs to transcend into the erotic. Sex
*The text in the above work was originally published in Short Talks (Brick Books, 1992) by Anne Carson.
THE NOVELS BELOW revolve around abortions, but they are also about community, mutuality, the blurring of the lines between self and others. The connections and collaborations here remind us that people will always band together during the most difficult times and decisions of their lives. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore KNOPF, 1994 It’s the summer of 1972, and Sils Chaussee is fifteen and pregnant. Her nineteen-year-old boyfriend, Mike, wants to raise
BIBLIOASIS, NOVEMBER 2022, 240 PP. IN 1846, THE British writer William Thoms coined the compound word folklore to describe “the traditional beliefs and customs of the common people,” replacing prior terms popular antiquities or popular literature. Lore in this coinage derives from learning or instruction to evoke the way in which this body of shared knowledge is passed along orally among the folk who practice it. Within the category of folklore nests the subcategory of
FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, OCTOBER 2022, 419 PP. THE FRENCH, ELIZABETH Hardwick wrote, “have a nearly manic facility and energy” for the art of homage. The literary guest of the French table rushes off, perhaps leaves early, to transcribe the night’s witticisms. So copious is this national record keeping that a meeting between artists can be viewed from multiple perspectives, like sculpture in the round. Not so, Hardwick argues, in the United States, where
VERSO, OCTOBER 2022, 128 PP. I LOVE A good manifesto, and Sophie Lewis’s Abolish the Family is just that. Anchored in a strikingly hopeful feminist Marxism, Lewis leads the reader through a systematic, didactic introduction to the politics and possibilities of cutting ourselves loose from the constraints and impositions of the traditional patriarchal, capitalist family. Wisely, Lewis begins with an emotional negotiation, since part of the naturalization and success of the “family” as a concept
GROVE ATLANTIC, NOVEMBER 2022, 672 PP. I’VE PREFACED FAR too many conversations lately with “I’ve just read Kafka’s diaries.” I actually read Kafka’s diaries about six months ago, but I can’t shake the feeling I’ve discovered something incredible. It’s silly, I know. Surprise, surprise: Kafka is good. But I’ve been acting like a teenager in love with a pop star. Recently, a Berliner boy I was on a date with informed me that his father
CITY LIGHTS, DECEMBER 2022, 232 PP. BY PAGE 33 of her engrossing and candid memoir, filmmaker Joyce Chopra has revealed that while growing up in 1950s New York, men regularly exposed themselves to her in cruising cars, on the subway, and under the Coney Island boardwalk. She has been sexually assaulted by her brother and raped by an ex-boyfriend, has had an illegal abortion, and moved to Paris to pursue filmmaking, where she’s repeatedly
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