Now that we have ordered well may we turn back
upon suffering; after the fixed moments and precision
to seek comfort in release. Peace being with us,
may we flourish in our design and discover, peaceful,
that we are not human until we die—now that we have ordered
all the rules may we seek out what rules us;
when we have fixed all matter in a pattern,'
as who have emptied all problems into one
and made science simple may we break down;
now that there is nothing not said or recorded
and made use of may we give back the whole thing—
since we are through thinking and all that is needed
IS to do may we sit back—now that what remains
IS but to live well, all means being available
may we drop them and go, go somewhere that is not
calling us,that is not in us, for which we have no earthly use at all.
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau.
Rachel Cusk photo courtesy the author.
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