Spring 2021

The Paris Review

The world's preeminent literary magazine.

The Paris Review1 min read
Pre-order* Your Copy Today At
theparisreview.org/poetsatwork *BOOKS SHIP IN EARLY APRIl The Paris Review is proud to announce the publication of Poets at Work— our latest anthology of interviews. Selected and introduced by poetry editor Vijay Seshadri, the thirteen conversations
The Paris Review22 min read
Anthony Veasna So
Always they find us inappropriate, but today especially so. Here we are with nowhere to go and nothing to do, sitting in a rusty pickup truck, the one leaking oil, the one with the busted transmission that sounds like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Her
The Paris Review2 min read
Two Poems by Kirmen Uribe
Trotsky for me was ridinghigh up on the back of the tractor Trotsky for me was taking a bath nakedwith my little friend in the bathtub. Trotsky for me was ridinghigh up on the bicycle’s handlebars. Trotsky for me was using ash woodto make arrows like
The Paris Review33 min read
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Fifty years ago, at a harp recital in Gloucestershire, a retired British military officer with a clipped aristo accent came across a brown-skinned teenager. “I say, old chap, do you speak English?” the officer said. As a story in Yale’s New Journal r
The Paris Review27 min readWellness
John Jeremiah Sullivan
When I was small my parents would host a lot of parties. I don’t know if they had more friends then or were just, as people say, “at a more social place in their lives,” but at least once a month there would be a bunch of adults in our apartment, dri
The Paris Review31 min read
Peyton Burgess
Sometimes PB to my students, Sack to my friends, and always Pete to my family, my name is Peter Burgundy and I worry that death has been my only inspiration to be a better person—that death has had a way of making life understandable. And oh whoa, ho
The Paris Review3 min read
Tracie Morris
1. There’s a sign near the waterfrontI think it’s advertising cheer:says 400 YEARS, VIRGINIA SPIRITS. A swig. A year ago last night, my dead crowd mean even ceremonyof Jamestown, at the schooner that brought those first here.They think: long tripdid
The Paris Review1 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Ocean Vuong
Scraped the last $8.48from the glass jar.Your day’s worth of tips at the nail salon. Enoughfor one hit. Enoughto be good till noon butthese hands alreadyblurring. The money a weird hummingbird caughtin my fingers. I take outthe carton of eggs. Crack
The Paris Review2 min read
Three Poems by Sheri Benning
the baby, name lost. 1906. Spring born,almond and blackthorn in bloom. Meadowsweet,chickweed, petals of milk on her lips. Spider-silk saliva from mouth to crab apple fists,on Mother’s lap, the train from Kiev to Minskafter the last harvest in Tiegeno
The Paris Review2 min read
Forrest Gander
Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette against detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the falling • swell
The Paris Review4 min read
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Poetry’s “impulse, like electricity, crossing the space, leaves its signature.”—W. S. Graham No wonder that a flash of sparksSpills out from what I touch—the LaserJet, Brimming with static shock,Suspends invisible electron-clouds Across the laser-pap
The Paris Review6 min read
Mary Kuryla
The thing about the shape of a bee, which might be why it is often drawn curved around a flower with the black head bowed over the thorax and the knees tucked in lovely and benign as a comma, lucent wings arching from stripes furred to catch pollen b
The Paris Review16 min read
Yohanca Delgado
The widow arrived at LaGuardia on a Sunday, but the rumors about the woman who had rented a big apartment, sight unseen, had taken an earlier flight. We had already reviewed, on many occasions and in hushed tones, in the quiet that comes after long h
The Paris Review30 min read
Allan Gurganus
Allan Gurganus’s prose exemplifies Evelyn Waugh’s belief that writing, all writing, must be regarded as an exercise in the fresh use of language. In his best-selling debut in 1989, the behemoth showstopper Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (i
The Paris Review1 min read
The Paris Review
Editor Emily Nemens Managing Editor Hasan Altaf Online Editor Nadja Spiegelman Assistant Online Editor Brian Ransom Assistant Editor Lauren Kane Poetry Editor Vijay Seshadri Art Editor Charlotte Strick Southern Editor John Jeremiah Sullivan London Ed
The Paris Review1 min read
Kendra Allen
Foreskin. A default setting. midnight. Dry eyes. Hesitation at an intersection. Premature adulthood. sheets. Freelancing. Yes maybe. knuckles. Hypervigilance. Corn stubs A sucked-in stomach. Syncing. Infantile embroidery. Showtime. The next step. Pri
The Paris Review10 min read
Campbell McGrath
1. A storm of buzzards is circling outside the windowof my hospital room, looking south and east across the rivertoward the high-rise construction cranes downtown.They are a regular sight in December, buzzards migratingin particulate vortices, slow-m
The Paris Review1 min read
Maya C. Popa
There is not one leaf left on that treeon which a bird sits this Christmas morning, the sky heavy with snow that never arrives,the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast nothingness, it’s easy to feel afraid,overlooked by something that was meant
The Paris Review15 min read
Maxim Osipov
Vnukovo is the smallest, most intimate of Moscow’s airports, and when your flight arrives—especially if it arrives on Saturday at eleven at night—you don’t expect to see much of a crowd. Stamps in the passport, baggage claim—quick and easy. “Where ar
The Paris Review2 min read
Paige Jiyoung Moon
This spring, with the world still in on-again, off-again lockdown, our memories of seasons past grow sweeter. The California-based artist Paige Jiyoung Moon makes a practice of recording her memories in paint. Her canvases are ambitious not in scale
The Paris Review2 min read
Ron Silliman
from “PARROT EYES LUST” for Elliot Helfer Do potatoes suffer? Would it be newwith a blue pen? This lightweightfuturisticslightly minimalistblack Germanfountain pen The Lamy Safari The alphabetwith my name insertedblack against red the same asCaxton’s
The Paris Review4 min read
Contributors
KENDRA ALLEN is the author of the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet. A book of poems, The Collection Plate, will be published by Ecco this summer. SHERI BENNING’s fourth collection of poetry, Field Requiem, is forthcoming from Carcanet. RO

The Paris Review

More Issues From The Paris Review