Barrel bombs. Chlorine gas. Tomahawks.
The crowd balks
at the little lute sleeping through the news.
What was of use
is shipwrecked on seashores, like the mustang;
and who once sang
of smallswords and chamfrons is at liberty to sing
about anything.
Tourists behold the horses. Left to their own devices
on island paradises
accessible by ferry or intracoastal bridge,
they’ve lost prestige
if none of their grand manner. It is a pity
that their utility
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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