Cormac McCarthy’s work means a lot to me, though when I try to explain exactly what, I find myself unusually stymied; my affinity for him doesn’t make all that much sense to me. What connection do I have with the landscapes he conjures? What knowledge do I have of the kind of violence that is the subject and the fabric of many of his books? What place do I find in a world that is, among other things, nearly entirely masculine, hostile, rife with true desperation? The answer is none—unlike with much of my reading, I do not seek a mirror in McCarthy’s worldview—and yet there is something in its aesthetic articulation that has always resonated with me. (I have a curious memory of reading The Road over my mom’s shoulder when I must have been about ten.) I have a passage from All The Pretty Horses saved on my desktop, which I have revisited often and send around now and again, and which I cannot quote in full here but which ends:

The water was black and warm and he turned in the lake and spread his arms in the water and the water was so dark and so silky and he watched across the still black surface to where she stood on the shore with the horse and he watched where she stepped from her pooled clothing so pale, so pale, like a chrysalis emerging, and walked into the water.

She paused midway to look back. Standing there trembling in the water and not from the cold for there was none. Do not speak to her. Do not call. When she reached him he held out his hand and she took it. She was so pale in the lake she seemed to be burning. Like foxfire in a darkened wood. That burned cold. Like the moon that burned cold. Her black hair floating on the water about her, falling and floating on the water. She put her other arm about his shoulder and looked toward the moon in the west do not speak to her do not call and then she turned her face up to him. Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal. Nesting cranes that stood singlefooted among the cane on the south shore had pulled their slender beaks from their wingpits to watch. Me quieres? she said. Yes, he said. He said her name. God yes, he said.

Earlier this year, the Review commissioned the artist Jameson Green to paint a series of writers’ portraits for our new Summer issue—an idea Green came up with after looking through our archives and being particularly intrigued by a portfolio of Picasso’s drawings published in 1987. What he gave us is a delightful collection of what he calls “head studies,” renderings of famous writers from our archive—some recognizable, some less so—that capture, loosely, something of each subject’s essence. And, like much of Green’s other work, Writers borrows from various art historical styles—you’ll find, for instance, a Picasso-esque Percival Everett (or is it Edgar Allan Poe?) and Shirley Hazzard in the style of Vincent Van Gogh. Over the phone, we talked about his childhood obsession with cartoons and about the special attention portraits require, and I tried to guess who was who.

INTERVIEWER

Do you consider yourself a portraitist?

No lengthy introduction this week. Instead, this week is dedicated to a survey to authors: are you seeing an impact on the number and types of school and library visit invitations in this era of censorship?

Click this link to fill out the survey.

All responses are due July 1, for an anticipated July 14 run date. Anyone who is a traditionally published author for minor-age readers may participate. It is anonymous, and participation in every question is not required. We want to find out how much your income is being impacted by the bigotry perpetuated by right-wing Christofascism in public schools and libraries.

It’s been a little over a week since the publication of Elliot Page’s memoir, Pageboy, and the haters have settled in on Goodreads. This isn’t surprising. Page is perhaps the most publicly visible trans celebrity to publish a memoir in recent memory. What’s more, though he does write about his career in Hollywood, the making of movies like Juno and Whip It, and his relationships with famous actors, in many ways, the book is not a traditional celebrity memoir. Pageboy is an intimate, vulnerable, and poetic coming-into-self story about one trans man’s deeply personal and specific journey. It’s not a chronological story, either — it’s a queerly beautiful collection of memories and moments. Page moves around in time, skipping from childhood to the near-present to his early acting career and back. This nonlinear structure will feel bone-deep true to many queer and trans readers. It certainly felt like home to me.

It’s also what some readers seem to have such a problem with. After finishing the book, completely delighted by the inherent queerness of this structure, and with a queasy feeling in my gut that people were going to hate it, I spent about seven minutes scrolling through Goodreads. I did not read every review, but seven minutes was enough to confirm my suspicions. There are, happily, many glowing reviews. But the theme of the negative reviews is consistent: Why couldn’t he have told this story chronologically? It was so confusing to keep track of the timeline! I couldn’t make sense of the nonlinear structure. None of these are actual quotes — I’m paraphrasing from lots of reviews.

What’s even more telling is the surprising number of positive reviews with a caveat. I read several four-star reviews praising Page’s writing and honesty, exclaiming how much they enjoyed the book on a whole and then — but why did he have to tell it this way? It would have been so much better and easier to follow if it has been told chronologically. Again, I’m paraphrasing.

In popular culture today, Judy Garland is best remembered as an actress, singer, and entertainer extraordinaire whose personal struggles often overshadowed her professional accomplishments.

While she was under contract for 15 years with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) during which she starred in career-defining musical roles in The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, and numerous others, her life was plagued by impossible work demands. As such, biographers differ on whether it was her mother or MGM that got her hooked on amphetamines to keep her going; whatever the case, it led to a lifelong battle with alcohol and substance abuse.

Following her untimely dismissal from MGM in 1950, she rebounded from a highly publicized suicide attempt with record-breaking concert appearances that redefined her career outside of Hollywood. She received an Academy Award nomination for what was supposed to be her triumphant comeback film, A Star is Born, and became the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for the live recording of Judy at Carnegie Hall. Still, financial difficulty and drug dependence doomed the rest of her life, and she died from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 47 in 1969.

But one fact about Judy Garland that often gets left out of modern reporting on the star is that she was a passionate fan of poetry. In fact, as a teenager at MGM, she self-published her own book of poetry called Thoughts and Poems. It was 10 pages long and contained eight poems. It first published in 1940 with only a select few copies given out to close friends. Jack Chitgian Bookbinding Service in Beverly Hills, who manufactured the book, reprinted an unknown amount of copies in the early 1970s after Garland’s death. One copy that survived was sold at auction in 2017 for $1,600.

According to Manuel Betancourt in Judy Garland’s Judy at Carnegie Hall, the poems Garland wrote in the 1930s are defined by “overly dramatic scenes of romance and glamour befitting a teenage girl who pined away for boys who were always much more interested in, say, Lana Turner, than Judy herself.” In her early years, Garland was always made out to be the ugly duckling when compared to other young MGM stars like Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner. Her first serious romance was with band leader Artie Shaw, who left her to elope with Turner in 1940.

It’s summer, with longer days, more sunshine, and warmer weather. It’s a great time to be outside — but as someone who hasn’t always loved being outside, I get that it’s not always easy as saying “get outside!” Being outdoors and in nature does not come naturally to me. I’d rather be inside in the air conditioning, wearing comfy sweats, and curled up with a great book. However, I know that both my son and I are happier, much less stressed, and healthier being outside, getting plenty of sunshine and fresh air, and exploring nature…even if I don’t always love the bugs.

It’s been a process for me. Because I want my son to love nature, I have had to very deliberately choose outdoor activities like our nature class, and make a concerted effort to take our homeschooling outside when we can, even if it’s just a morning walk around our condo building, or sitting outside on a blanket for our read-alouds.

While I still consider myself a “newbie” with the outdoors, I love reading memoirs about those who are more adventurous than I, like Morgan Sjogren’s Path of Light, or Jennifer Pharr Davis’s Becoming Odyssa. But there are other books that are great to read to help you get started on your outdoorsy journey — whether you’re thinking about hiking, trying an outdoor sport, or not quite sure you “belong” in the outdoors. (You do). I’ve put together a list of some books to pique your interest, encourage you, or provide you with some reassurance about getting started on your outdoor journey.

Summer is on the way, bringing with it longer days, warmer weather, and the chance to join in with a whole host of summer activities! Summer can be an especially fun time for very small children, who will love seeing how the change of seasons affects plants and animals, and who will look forward to exciting days at the park or the beach. Whether you live in the city or the countryside, there are plenty of great things about summer to enjoy, including ice cream, barbecues, warm evenings, and outdoor games. While us adults have lived through many (many, many) summers, sharing them with little ones can bring the magic back, and remind us of the joy this season brings.

If you have a toddler in your life who’s learning about the seasons, or eager to get outside and play, there are plenty of great summer books for toddlers. Some of them focus on summertime plants and animals, while others explore all the cool summer games children can play. If you want some inspiration for what to do this summer, or just want to share a fun read with your little one, check out this list of cute and fun toddler summer books, with storylines and illustrations that will keep you entertained all summer long!

There are few authors working right now that are as prolific as Alexis Hall, best-selling author of urban fantasy, mystery, sci-fi, and romance. He has written over 30 books in the past 10 years alone, with many more books announced for the near future. Hall’s work has been nominated for multiple LAMBDA awards, and many credit his books for bringing queer stories to mainstream audiences.

But who is Alexis Hall? Actually, he’d rather you not know. In fact, Alexis Hall is a pen name the author uses to separate his writing career from his day job. Yes, somehow Alexis Hall has a day job on top of writing four books in 2022 alone. But in general, the author is very secretive about his personal life.

“I’m personally a strong believer that an author’s work should speak for itself,” Halls says on his FAQ page. “While I would never discourage other authors from positioning themselves differently (as long as they don’t use their platform to harm people), I actively don’t want to centre myself in my own work.”

Okay, so the books should speak for themselves. That’s all well and good, but when an author has this many books, where do you even begin? If you’re new to the world of Alexis Hall, here’s your reading pathway. These books are just the beginning of what this author has to offer, but they’re the essential must-reads.

The collective dream is over. Squinting, we walk out of the playoffs and return to Life. Images linger—a giant holding a toddler in a storm of confetti. A shiny, exuberant, mantis-like man standing next to a trophy. The woman who sat courtside wearing red and white gowns. The inexplicable man-made-out-of-Sprite commercial. Duncan Robinson’s tough-guy face.

On Monday, after the great battle of Game 5, the Denver Nuggets won the NBA championship for the first time in franchise history. I was introduced to the on-court chemistry between the Nuggets stars Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray during the 2020 Western Conference Finals. Though they lost that series in five games to the Lakers (who would go on to win the championship after beating the Heat), they were great fun to watch. I found Murray’s smile infectious. He seemed unselfconscious and comfortable in his body. When he was having fun, I was having fun.

In 2021, Jokić received the first of two consecutive MVP awards. Right before the playoffs that year, Murray tore his ACL, missing the playoffs and the entire next season. Jokić carried the team without him, but in the 2022 playoffs, the Nuggets lost in the first round to the Golden State Warriors (who later went on to win the championship). While the Sixers center Joel Embiid won this year’s MVP, most basketball fans believe Jokić is the better player. His performance in these Finals was sensational. His passes were gorgeous, his threes looked like afterthoughts. When the camera cut to him, he often seemed displeased. He was an unstoppable force, even when he wasn’t scoring. He made it look effortless. I thought of him as Paul Bunyan.

I liked whenever the broadcast cut to a room in Serbia, Jokić’s home country, where fans stayed up till dawn, watching the Nuggets game live. In the postgame interviews before the award ceremony, it was wonderful to see Jamal Murray’s teary-eyed smile as he spoke about the long journey coming back from his injury. And even a Heat fan could appreciate Jokić’s genuine disappointment upon learning that he’d have to attend a victory parade in Denver on Thursday when he was eager to fly home to Serbia to watch his horse, Dream Catcher, race on Sunday.

For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking some poets to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages. Richie Hofmann’s “Armed Cavalier” appears in our new Summer issue, no. 244.

How did this poem start for you? Was it with an image, an idea, a phrase, or something else?

As is so often the case for me, the poem began as another poem entirely. I was working on a poetic sequence that interposed my translations of Michelangelo’s homoerotic sonnets with several short, original haiku-like poems inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids. Both artists were interested in beauty and torture. Mapplethorpe’s photographs are experiments in self-portraiture and bondage. In one of Michelangelo’s sonnets, the speaker confesses that, in order to be happy, he must be conquered and chained, a prisoner of an “armed cavalier” (the phrase puns on the name of the object of Michelangelo’s infatuation, Tommaso dei Cavalieri). Upon reading that phrase, I instantly wanted it to be the title for a new poem that would express the extremity of sexuality and the extremity of making art. 

From the sonnets of Michelangelo, I wanted to import a kind of violence of rhetoric (not unlike the dramatic conceits we find again and again in Petrarch). The poems are so desperate. Their pain is sculptural. From the photographs of Mapplethorpe, I wanted to import a violence of image. And the sense that everything—flowers in a vase, classical sculpture, BDSM—is part of a landscape of embodied beauty. Ultimately, as I revised the poem, and reworked it into “Armed Cavalier,” I wanted to express the ferocity of feeling in both artists’ works, but without any overt ekphrastic framing. 

On September 8, 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allies, and the Germans, who had already occupied the north of Italy, immediately moved to take over the rest of the country. Just days later, they invaded Rome. Meanwhile, British and American forces had landed in the south and were slowly moving northward.

The writer Alba de Céspedes and her companion (and later her husband), Franco Bounous, were living in Rome. De Céspedes had been jailed briefly by Mussolini for antifascist activities; Bounous was a diplomat and did not want to collaborate with the Germans. As conditions in the city worsened, becoming more chaotic and more dangerous, de Céspedes and Bounous decided to leave. On September 23, “secretly, at night,” they departed, “each with a suitcase,” de Céspedes wrote to her mother, “thinking we’d be gone a few days, that Rome would soon be liberated.” They escaped to a village in Abruzzo, east of the city, where they expected they would be able to wait in tranquility. But the Germans showed up, and they fled again, to a tiny village in the mountains nearby, Torricella Peligna.

This diary recounts the days between October 18, when they had to flee Torricella and go into hiding in the woods, and November 19, when they decided to try to get through the German lines to reach the safety of the Allied-occupied zone. De Céspedes later wrote, “Life had gradually become more unbearable, the Germans were coming at night, too. So we decided to risk it all and cross the lines, reaching the Anglo-American troops. And safety. We did that, walking at night, November 20”  Guided by a local farmer, Fioravante, they managed to cross the Sangro river, which marked the German front line, and arrive in the Allied zone. From there they were taken in a farm cart to Bari, where de Céspedes began broadcasting for the antifascist station Radio Bari. Eventually she and Bounous moved to Naples and, finally, returned to Rome, after it had been liberated by the Allies in June of 1944.

—Ann Goldstein, translator

We do not read the Bible as it is meant to be read. Theology always risks leading us astray by elaborating its own discourse, with the biblical texts merely as a point of departure. The presence of poetry in the Bible is the key to a more pertinent and more faithful reading.

There are many poems found in the Bible. We know this, vaguely and without giving it too much thought, but shouldn’t we be rather astonished by the role of poetry in a collection of books with such a pressing and salutary Word to express? And shouldn’t we ask ourselves if the presence of this writing—so much more self-conscious and desirous than is prose of a form it can make vibrate—affects the biblical “message” and changes its nature?

It is unsurprising that the Psalms are poems, given their liturgical purpose and the abyss of individual and collective emotion that they explore. At the heart of the Bible and yet also apart from it, they lay out, we might suppose, for both the individual and the community, the lived experience of religion that other biblical books have the task of defining. We can accept the Song of Songs as a love poem, Jeremiah’s Lamentations as a sequence of elegies, Job as a verse drama, and we discover without too much surprise a considerable number of poems in the historical books: the song of Moses and Miriam, for example, in Exodus 15; the canticle of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5; the lament of David for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1. And yet when we think about the presence of all these poetic books in a work in which we expect to find doctrines, and about the turn to poetry in so many of the historical books of the Bible, it gives us reason to think again. And how should we react to Proverbs, in which wisdom itself is taught in a poetic form? Or to the prophetic books, where poetry is sovereign, where warnings of the greatest urgency, for us as well as for the writers’ contemporaries, come forth in verse?

Isn’t this curious? And poetry appears from the beginning. In the second chapter of Genesis (verse 23), Adam welcomes the creation of woman in this way:

Julian Maclaren-Ross’s 1947 novel, Of Love and Hunger, is a defiantly unedifying English comedy about a vacuum-cleaner salesman trying to keep his chin up in the gloom of prewar Brighton. Its not-quite-forgotten (if never-exactly-acclaimed) author has been on my radar ever since I learned that he was the model for the bohemian novelist character X. Trapnel in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. That monumental roman-fleuve of English life happened to be a significant inspiration for a project of my own—a novel about the seventies London I grew up in, an excerpt of which appears in the new Summer issue of the Review—so when I found myself trying to think of a book that one of my middle-aged characters might have read in her youth, the Maclaren-Ross novel sprang to mind, and I finally read it. As it turned out, I don’t think my character, a tortured soul who tends to find everything “ghastly,” would have enjoyed it. She would have found the seedy boarding houses and tearooms and pubs that comprise its setting “ghastly”; she‘d have found the petty swindling and debt-dodging antics of the protagonist and his fellow salesmen “ghastly,” and she’d have found his unapologetic romance with the wife of an absent colleague “too ghastly for words.” But I couldn’t get enough of it. There’s nothing obviously brilliant about the writing or plotting, both of which tend toward the studiedly humdrum. (“Two more cars passed, then a bus.”) But somehow its little throwaway visions of fleeting bliss snatched from abiding squalor got under my skin. I haven’t enjoyed a novel so much in ages. 

—James Lasdun, author of “Helen”

Recently, I’ve been listening to old demo tapes by the Cure on repeat. I like hearing the rough and sometimes fragile beginnings of their songs. A demo feels more like it’s breathing—it’s not fixed. It has been through fewer hands and there’s something enthralling about that. The song is still thinking. The demo for “Six Different Ways” sounds underwater but the essence is there—maybe even more than in the finished song. There is a thinness, a wobbliness, and a directness to the recording—a distinctly temporary quality—not perfection—not in tune always. More the act of making a root.

If you are contemplating self-destruction, please tell someone you trust. Immediate counseling is available 24-7 by dialing 1-800-SUICIDE or 988.

A Sunday afternoon in early spring. We’d spent the morning quiet, in separate rooms—me in my office, writing; Molly on the bed in the guest room, working too, so I believed. I’d pass by and see her using her laptop or reading from the books piled on the bed where she lay prone, or sometimes staring off out through the window to the yard. It was warm for March already, full of the kind of color through which you can begin to see the blooming world emerge. Molly didn’t want to talk really, clearly feeling extremely down again, and still I tried to hug her, leaning over the bed to wrap my arms around her shoulders as best I could. She brushed me off a bit, letting me hold her but not really responding. I let her be—it’d been a long winter, coming off what felt like the hardest year in both our lives, to the point we’d both begun to wonder if, not when, the struggle would ever slow. I wished there could be something I might say to lift her spirits for a minute, but I also knew how much she loathed most any stroke of optimism or blind hope, each more offensive than the woe alone. Later, though, while passing in the hallway in the dark, she slipped her arms around me at the waist and drew me close. She told me that she loved me, almost a whisper, tender, small in my arms. I told her I loved her too, and we held each other standing still, a clutch of limbs. I put my head in her hair and looked beyond on through the bathroom where half-muted light pressed at the window as through a tarp. When we let go, she slipped out neatly, no further words, and back to bed. The house was still, very little sound besides our motion. After another while spent working, I came back and asked if she’d come out with me to the yard to see the chickens, one of our favorite ways to pass the time. Outside, it was sodden, lots of rain lately, and the birds were restless, eager to rush out of their run and hunt for bugs. Molly said no, she didn’t want to go, asked if I’d bring one to the bedroom window so she could see—something I often did so many days, an easy way to make her smile. I scooped up Woosh, our Polish hen, my favorite, and brought her over to the glass where Molly sat. This time, though, when I approached the window, Molly didn’t move toward us, open the window, as she would usually. Even as I smiled and waved, holding Woosh up close against the glass, speaking for her in the hen-voice that I’d made up, Molly’s mouth held clamped, her eyes like dents obscured against the glare across the dimness of the room. Woosh began to wriggle, wanting down. The other birds were ranging freely, unattended—which always made me nervous now, as in recent months a hawk had taken favor to our area, often reappearing in lurking circles overhead, waiting for the right time to swoop down and make a meal out of our pets. So I didn’t linger for too long at the window, antsy anyway to get on and go for my daily run around the neighborhood, one of the few reasons I still had for getting out of the house. I gripped Woosh by her leg and made it wave, a little goodbye, then hurried on, leaving Molly staring blankly at the space where I’d just been: a view of a fence obscured only by the lone sapling she’d planted last spring in yearning for the day she wouldn’t have to see the neighbors. 

*** 

I read Charif Shanahan’s Trace Evidence two ways: first as a new work by a friend, written through and about what I know to have been some of his most harrowing years, during which he recovered from a near-fatal bus accident in Morocco, and also as the second collection of a phenomenal early-career poet with a dangerously skilled command of craft. I read it as an intimate reader, and as a distant one, and both times, I experienced a sense of introduction. When we talked on Zoom, Charif told me the book “feels like a birth,” and that feeling of birth, or rebirth, permeates Trace Evidence, as a deepening and an extension of the questions in Shanahan’s first collection, and as an announcement of self and purpose that feels brand new.

—Morgan Parker

PARKER

I love the last line of “Trace Evidence,” the book’s titular poem: “For us here now I will be the first of our line.” It’s such an exhilarating sentence. Can you tell me about that idea of deciding to be a beginning?

Four weeks sharing a room in San Francisco, four weeks since I decided not to go back to England. Gabe wasn’t sleeping. A quarter tab of acid for his breakfast. Spliffs throughout the day, booze and blue raspberry C4 preworkout all through the night. He was recording an album, working on his set, making a website, building a 24-7 open-source radio live-stream at a free hackers’ space, and not finishing anything.

I was trying to write but spending a lot of time crying on the hot roof of the apartment building when he wasn’t around. He found me up there one afternoon at the end of one of his twelve-hour stints at the hackers’ space. Two straw hats, a beer, two cups. “I know you like to drink out of little cups!” He smiled and the inside of his mouth was blue from the raspberry preworkout. How do you hate someone as much as you love them? He said he’d been looking for me because he had a great plan. A childhood friend in the city was driving down to their hometown and we could get a ride. I could meet Gabe’s parents; go to the beach; see the fields, wildflowers, and back roads. So beautiful this time of year. I wondered if it might save us. “It’s God’s country,” he said.

We arrived at his parents’ the following morning, after a four-hour drive south. A low ranch-style house on a wide road of low ranch-style houses. Gabe said it was too nice a day to be stuck inside, so he took me around the side and we climbed straight up onto the roof: “I know you like roofs in California!” I did like roofs in California. The front and back yards of gravel, wood chip, and pebbles, interspersed with the occasional palm tree or redwood. At the end of the road was the main street, a couple of stores, a steak house, and a taqueria. Beyond, fields of lemon trees and mustard grass and farmland that stretched a few miles inland, up to a range of golden hills. Above us, the sun shone like the grill of a new truck.

The house was full of knickknacks and shells and crystals and string lights. A “Be Grateful” sign by the coffee maker. A “Be Grateful” mat by the front door. A canvas in the kitchen printed with a picture of three fluffy ducklings and the words “I have joy down in the bottom of my heart.” It was hard to make out how many cats there were. And then Birdie, the overweight chihuahua, waddled in from the hallway and charged at Gabe, baring his red gums and gnashing tiny, pointed teeth. Gabe told me the dog was the spawn of the devil and the root cause of all the issues that existed between him and his parents. I already knew that the issues between Gabe and his family had begun when Gabe had gone to college in Santa Cruz five years before, found drugs, wouldn’t get a real job, and kept having to move back home when he ran out of money.