And what did you see, sequoia-quiet, looking out at black
night. No islands, no kings or corridors of fury.
But the districts where we were born, a few icy stars,
the moon’s beaming chalk thirst. Above the painted desert,
the air rustles at your wrists, pulls away from the long
industry on land, up into those far lights. A vast ordinance,
unspoken, with no need to be spoken. Those who
did not have to die. Yourself, and all you loved.
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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