Advertisement

  • The Paris Review
  • Subscribe
      • Sign In

        Forgot password?

      • Subscribe
      • The Daily
        • The Latest
        • Columns
      • The Quarterly
        • Issues
        • Interviews
        • Fiction
        • Poetry
        • Letters & Essays
        • Art & Photography
      • Authors
      • Podcast
      • About
        • History
        • Opportunities
        • Masthead
        • Prizes
        • Submissions
        • Media Kit
        • Bookstores
      • Events
      • Donate
        • Donate to The Paris Review
        • Institutional Support
      • Newsletters
      • Store
  • The Paris Review
      • The Latest
      • Columns
      • Issues
      • Interviews
      • Fiction
      • Poetry
      • Letters & Essays
      • Art & Photography
    • Authors
    • Podcast
      • History
      • Opportunities
      • Masthead
      • Prizes
      • Submissions
      • Media Kit
      • Bookstores
    • Events
      • Donate to The Paris Review
      • Institutional Support
    • Newsletters
    • Store
    • Sign In

      Forgot password?

    • Subscribe

Nine Props

Lorna Simpson

Issue 138, Spring 1996

 

Want to keep reading?
Subscribe and save 33%.

Subscribe Now

Already a subscriber? Sign in below.

Link your subscription

Forgot password?

Paris Review Stack 244

Last / Next
Article

Last / Next Article

Share

More from Issue 138, Spring 1996

Buy this issue!

  • Fiction

    • Milan Kundera

      from Slowness

    • Jaime Collyer

      A Businessman Disappears

    • Junot Díaz

      Edison, New Jersey

    • Brady Udall

      Letting Loose the Hounds

  • Interview

    • John Gregory Dunne

      The Art of Screenwriting No. 2

    • Billy Wilder

      The Art of Screenwriting No. 1

    • Richard Price

      The Art of Fiction No. 144

  • Poetry

    • Christopher Bakken

      Three Poems

    • Bruce Bond

      Pomegranate

    • Shannon Borg

      Reclining Woman with Green Stockings

    • Nicole Cuddeback

      Son of Medea

    • Madeline DeFrees

      Three Poems

    • Michael Eilperin

      Three Poems

    • Gregory Fraser

      Still Life

    • Lise Goett

      Two Poems

    • Mac Hammond

      Two Poems

    • Anthony Hecht

      Two Poems

    • Rick Hilles

      Two Poems

    • Ellen Hinsey

      The Sermon to Fishes

    • William Hunt

      Likely Images

    • Mark Irwin

      Juvescence of Autumn

    • David M. Katz

      An Ode for William Collins

    • John Kinsella

      Two Poems

    • Caroline Knox

      Sonnet to the Portuguese

    • James Longenbach

      Three Poems

    • Judy Longley

      Brushfire At Christmas

    • Richard Lyons

      Two Poems

    • Corey Marks

      Two Poems

    • A. F. Moritz

      Nothing Happened Here

    • Kenneth Rosen

      The Work of Life

    • S. X. Rosenstock

      Two Poems

    • Stephen Sandy

      Six Poems

    • Jordan Smith

      The Dream of Marlowe

    • Shawn Sturgeon

      Babylonian Surprise

    • Pimone Triplett

      Two Poems

    • David Wojahn

      Before the Words

    • Mark Wunderlich

      Two Poems

  • Feature

    • Dan Algrant

      The Man in the Back Row Has a Question II: On Screenwriting

    • Henry Allen

      Terry Southern: An Appreciation

    • Mike Golden

      Terry Southern: A Conversation

    • Caroline Marshall

      Remembrance

    • George Plimpton

      Terry Southern: An Introduction

    • George Plimpton

      Truman Capote, Screenwriter: Beat the Devil

    • Nile Southern

      Envoi

    • Terry Southern

      Making It Hot for Them

    • William Styron

      Transcontinental with Tex

    • Maria Christina Villasenor

      Nine Props: A Conversation

    • Irvine Welsh

      Trainspotting Glossary

  • Notice

    • George Plimpton

      Notice

  • Art

    • Joyce Pensato

      Four Mice

    • Sarah Plimpton

      Issue No. 138 Cover

    • Lorna Simpson

      Nine Props

You Might Also Like
The Green and the Gold

The Green and the Gold

By Helen Longstreth
June 6, 2023
Announcing Our Summer Issue

Announcing Our Summer Issue

By Emily Stokes
June 6, 2023
Trespassing on Edith Wharton

Trespassing on Edith Wharton

By Alissa Bennett
June 5, 2023
Nam Le and Nancy Lemann Recommend

Nam Le and Nancy Lemann Recommend

By The Paris Review
June 2, 2023
Columns
Home Improvements

Home Improvements

By Ottessa Moshfegh and others
Overheard

Overheard

By Tarpley Hitt and others
Diaries

Diaries

By The Paris Review Contributors
The Review’s Review

The Review’s Review

By The Staff of The Paris Review

Advertisement

The Paris Review 244
Revel

Suggested Reading

The Green and the Gold

The Green and the Gold

By Helen Longstreth
June 6, 2023

“Gabe said he’d told his dad that he’d marry me if he had a dollar. ‘I dunno about marriage,’ I told him.”

The Daily Rower

The Daily

First Person

The Art of Poetry No. 114

By Sharon Olds
 

undefined

From left, Galway Kinnell, Robert Hass, Olds, and Brenda Hillman in the Oakley house at the Community of Writers, Olympic Valley, California, 1989. Courtesy of Sharon Olds and the Community of Writers.

Sharon Olds published her first book, Satan Says, in 1980, at the age of thirty-seven. The book is organized into four sections, “Daughter,” “Woman,” “Mother,” and “Journey,” and it begins with its title poem, whose speaker is locked in a box she can open only by repeating after Satan: “Say shit, say death, say fuck the father.” At the time, Olds—who was born in San Francisco, graduated from Stanford, and received a Ph.D. in English from Columbia—was married to a psychiatrist, and she spent her days on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, caring for their two young children. Not long after the book’s publication, she told me last year, someone who had invited her to give a reading picked her up at the airport and said, “I thought you would look angrier.”

Fiction

From the Archive, Issue 244

Interview

Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”

, November 2021
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

 

The Daily Rower
    • Subscribe
    • Support
    • Contact Us
    • Events
    • Media Kit
    • Submissions
    • Masthead
    • Prizes
    • Bookstores
    • Opportunities
    • Video
handdrawn Paris scene by du Bois

©2023 The Paris Review. All rights reserved

Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions