the uncanny ability, a special dance, a mind on safari,
the scent of blossoms, the foraging flight, the uncanny
ability, to cling, to find, to fly into a mind on safari,
the scent of blossoms, feet as small as eyelashes,
slipping in, a special dance, a sign language, circling
slowly, crawling deeper, feet as small as eyelashes,
into the tulip’s center, a sign language, folding his
wings, combing the surface with his tongue, crawling
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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