The clothes are black and unstructured this fall, enlivened here and there by what appears to be monastic chic: a crucifix of vaguely Eastern pro- venance, a cowl. My friend, fresh out of drama school, explains to me how starkly medieval woolens were cut: few seams, to spare unraveling,…
Ellie found her son in the school nurse’s office, laid out on a leatherette fainting couch like some child gothic, his shoes off, his arms crossed over his chest, his face turned to the wall. “What’s the deal, Kid Cody?” When he heard her voice, he turned only his head toward her, slowly, as if…
Donald Hall: Principal Products of Portugal, a collection of essays that serves as a tribute to the arts, from sports and poetry to sculpture and trees. (Beacon)
after “Farmhouse in Auvers with Two Figures” Talk about modern. The roof as flat as the sky, as the people. Forget Cézanne. Just look at this. And the shape of the roof: a fish, a car, a revolver. And the bushes like green fire, and the bush which seems to be growing out of the…
What are the sounds that crowd the path And linger above the unmown field? Do you hear? —The winds of heaven are talking In the language of the heart. “June, June,” They say. “June. The lilacs are gone.” Wonderful things are weary of me: The groaning meteors on the August road; The pressed grasses where…
A good man is seized by the police and spirited away. Months later someone brags that he shot him once through the back of the head with a Walther 7.65, and his life ended just there. Those who loved him go on searching the cafés in the Barrio Chino or the bars near the harbor….
Alberto Alvaro Ríos: Pig Cookies and Other Stories, thirteen interrelated tales of a small village in northern Mexico over the course of several decades earlier in this century. (Chronicle)
1. The Eskimo children balance their blackboards on their knees and write with soft fat chalk. A storm skitters across the frozen sea. Smidgeons of ice have swirled into pinwheels. 2. The painter Magritte is dabbing black paint on his canvas. Beneath the clock he writes “wind,” beneath the door “horse.” 3. The Eskimo children…
Having begun the day with a headache, Bonnie Saks was not particularly surprised to find herself finishing it the same way. Pain, in her experience, never disappeared; it merely retreated for a while and then came back when least convenient in another form. Like men, she thought. All afternoon there had been a chilly, puttering…
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