The Paris Review - Fall 2016

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I’m swimming. Water, it does something. And I move through different genres—that’s how I avoid writer’s block. So I’ll write a poem or draw a cartoon or work on a novel. Or I’ll write an essay. I get to reach a lot of people on Facebook. INTERVIEWER You’ve always advocated a democratic approach to literature—that good writing can be found anywhere, that it’s common and unsurprising. In your Neo-Hoodoo manifesto, from Conjure way back in 1972, you wrote, “Neo- HooDoo believes that every man is an artist and every artist a priest.” REED Yeah, though I’ve discovered that Richard Wright said it first. The other day I was visiting this high school, and this Chicano girl gets up there and reads a poem that blew me away. And there was another student—I’m introducing her to The Paris Review because she’s just extraordinary. And these kids, even if they never write a poem again, I’ve put their work alongside canonized poets in anthologies like From Totems to Hip-Hop. I went to the National Council of Teachers of English, I read a poem by a student, then read a poem by a canonized poet and asked them to choose which was which. Fifty percent said the student was the canonized poet. In Totems to Hip-Hop, there’s a poem by Cynthia Gomez called “San José”—it came from a workshop I did where I asked students to write a city poem modeled after Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago.” The BBC called a couple years ago and asked for that poem. I wonder what happened to her. Even if she never wrote another poem, she wrote that. Just like Langston Hughes wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” when he was a teenager, and most amazing of all, Billy Strayhorn started Lush Life when he was sixteen. I mean, the lyrics on there are amazing! So, that’s why I got very humble. Because I came from Buffalo and I thought poetry was an elite thing. Then I came to New York and I met the poet Walter Lowenfels. He was in his seventies at the time and he was listening to Coltrane, and I met Langston Hughes, who was one of the hippest people I ever met. Both of them were great poets, but also just accessible to everybody. Langston was instrumental in getting my first novel published. They’re the ones who led me to believe that poetry, that writing, can come from anywhere. 62
Ishmael Reed THE DIABETIC DREAMS OF CAKE “Wall Street says that cake sales are low” Or to put it bluntly “Cake is fizz” So why is a diabetic dreaming of cake Asked to leave a temple Because he didn’t know that rice cakes Were sacrament? (He managed to jam some into his pockets) He dreamed that Mount Diablo was a Devil’s food cake He began to munch it down until his path was Interrupted by his Pancreas The Pancreas had sticklike arms and legs It was frowning It put up a hand and beckoned him to halt He pushed aside the Pancreas and finished his Meal Next, he was attending the Asparagus Festival In Freiburg It was held in a great medieval hall and before Each person there was a plate of asparagus He started banging on his plate Asparagus Nicht, Kuchen Ja Next he was running across Central Park, juggling a wedding cake without Losing a single flake Safely in some Brooklyn room The news said that he had stolen The cake from a tony East Side wedding He didn’t take it all in 63
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HERMÈS BY NATURE
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THE TRENCH BOOT IN HORWEEN® BROWN
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“. . . one of the most influentia
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Editor Managing Editor Web Editor A
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#EVERYDAYMADEWELL MADEWELL.COM
Page 15 and 16: Michael Robbins WALKMAN I didn’t
Page 17 and 18: Crime’s 1976 classic “Hot Wire
Page 19 and 20: the resurrection of the body and li
Page 21 and 22: saying I was glad to help the cause
Page 23: Just think: there was a song that I
Page 26 and 27: name, twice, as though it were bein
Page 28 and 29: So what’s the story about? my mot
Page 30 and 31: eyes that some days seem black—an
Page 32 and 33: Wanda walks into a bar and stands b
Page 34 and 35: designed to fulfill the desires of
Page 36 and 37: Karen Solie A HERMIT Experience tea
Page 39 and 40: Manuscript page of “The Diabetic
Page 41 and 42: some Langston Hughes in the newspap
Page 43 and 44: attic of our house in Buffalo and p
Page 45 and 46: INTERVIEWER What appealed to you ab
Page 47 and 48: children were bombed at the 16th St
Page 49 and 50: INTERVIEWER I know you and Baraka h
Page 51 and 52: Last Stand of White Nationalism.”
Page 53 and 54: REED With literature you can condem
Page 55 and 56: But I do have problems with some fe
Page 57 and 58: tried to get the cash register by m
Page 59 and 60: INTERVIEWER Do you think that over
Page 61 and 62: wrote a long essay on James Baldwin
Page 63: Reed, 2015. “Combative writing ha
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Page 69 and 70: No Cops ANDREW MARTIN The ants had
Page 71 and 72: his literary status that made him s
Page 73 and 74: she’d get fired. Leslie couldn’
Page 75 and 76: home, and they’d lain on the hard
Page 77 and 78: “Right, like I’m going to just
Page 79 and 80: ONCE THE READING was underway, Lesl
Page 81 and 82: “Just fucking write something,”
Page 83: They followed the exodus out of the
Page 86 and 87: She would start writing when she go
Page 88 and 89: Protectors AMIE BARRODALE She cut t
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Page 92 and 93: Sauce”; “Homemade Natural Fizzy
Page 94 and 95: The door to the guest room opened w
Page 96 and 97: “A Milk-Bone.” “And does she
Page 98 and 99: “Well, maybe. I can’t tell actu
Page 100: A dark room full of birds where I s
Page 103 and 104: desire to draw. I would draw everyt
Page 107 and 108: San Rocco, 2004, gouache, 12" x 9".
Page 109 and 110: Drawing Together, 2000, watercolor,
Page 111 and 112: This spread : Quotidian Paradise, 2
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Stations, 1990, oil on canvas, 60"
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The Moment Rethought, 1991, oil on
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Eurydice, 9-16, 1995, gouache, each
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change, continuing ~ look, look aga
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fell soundless on the shadowed snow
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translucent, scouring, churning, ch
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petrels taking flight. They turn to
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everything the river knows? ~ Mired
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to the light below the bridges—wa
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is caught and wound around the boll
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~~~ The river surges, then eddies t
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a line of the river stays true to i
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to the boat turned counterclockwise
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understood, star-crossed, unrequite
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Panthers ANN BEATTIE Little Edgar c
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“Take out the casserole. I’ll b
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Yes, he nodded. Out of the corner o
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“Little Edgar, get your little bu
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“Mrs. Rodriguez, Edgar has been t
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“We live in Key West. My friend w
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“That I could have been attacked.
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He’s maybe going to have to go ba
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“Little Edgar,” she repeated.
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Lawrence Joseph IS WHAT IT IS Fulto
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The Well AKHIL SHARMA We lived frug
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Years passed. We moved from Queens
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Friday’s. “Be careful,” I sai
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just like there was in me. The symp
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Betsy was probably going to end. I
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Rowan Ricardo Phillips LITTLE SONGS
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visit, he gave us keys and allowed
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I knew him warmly, but I did have a
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With my best and not even particula
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of my priggishness. Nonetheless, it
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ecall. It was meant to be George Pu
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This was the era of the Vietnam War
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most of Mao’s works at one time o
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We didn’t talk about poetry much,
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Shall I shut the door on this book?
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elations. I was clumsy, and inexper
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PRYNNE He was a great fountainhead
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this phenomenon of molecular forces
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about Parmenides as an author you c
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ight at the conclusion of the poem,
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Edinburgh, all over the place. On t
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dialectical part of it comes in. It
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Four Poems by J. H. Prynne YET WHY
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MORNING To the or so then for all f
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Marker Studio Front Door, 2012.
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identical to himself ? How do you r
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Kosmos: Red Bath, Zvezda, Moscow, 1
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of kitsch), no dust; the thousands
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Marker Studio #7, 2007.
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Marker Studio #4, 2007.
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Charles Simic HISTORY Our life stor
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CONTRIBUTORS AMIE BARRODALE’s fir
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WWW.HONEYANDWAXBOOKS.COM
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The Paris Review - Fall 2016

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