Underneath the damask rose
The marriage lace is torn.
Lift up loblolly days to disclose
The paralytic hours, sworn
To lumber, while the fat bear raids
Beneath the moon and blowzers the brocades
Within the Baptist Female College.
The Robertson County Almanac,
Calculated for Tennessee:
“The state of humble Wedded-Lock
Is better than proud Virginity.”
What of Beau Nash, naked on a cow,
Who shows the timid gentlemen how
To assuage the longing for intrigue?
The New Yorkers talk of lower-men
And how love-nights are fine and mellow,
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.
Subscribe for free: Stitcher | Apple Podcasts | Google Play