The Paris Review

A most challenging publisher

Just this one to read this month. My traveling, and return with a head cold have delayed my posting even though I wanted to write about The Paris Review for the end of June; poetry subs reopen July 1st. Other poetry months are January, April and October. Prose is read in October, February and June. It isn’t easy to get into this esteemed literary journal (understatement) but it’s worth noticing what and who is being published in the most recent issues, and making your decisions from there. I subscribe, so I can give you glimpses beyond what is accessible on the site.

The Paris Review was founded in Paris, France in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton with the aim of publishing good creative work—”the non-drumbeaters and non axe-grinders” in the introductory words of William Styron—and putting the criticism of such in the back of the issues. (Other literary journals of the time lead with literary criticism.) It moved to New York City in the 1960’s. Plimpton edited it for 50 years, and in 2021, Emily Stokes was named the sixth editor, succeeding Emily Nemens’ short tenure. Novelist Mona Simpson became the current publisher, in 2020; Srikanth Reddy, the new poetry editor, in late 2022. Harriet Clark, who won the journal’s Plimpton Prize for Poetry in 2023, and was listed as an editor-at-large in the spring issue, is senior editor as of summer. The contributor’s notes in The Paris Review are among the briefest I’ve seen while they publish some established writers with plenty of books to list. Duotrope users list the journal as one of the “Extremely Challenging Fiction Publishers” and “25 Most Challenging Poetry Publishers”. I was ready to share the spring issue when the summer arrived; I’ll dip into both.

Let’s look at a poem from the Spring issue. It’s by Mary Ruefle whose slim contributor’s note mentions the title of her “most recent book” that is actually her 22nd book (17 poetry, three prose, a nonfiction book, and a book of erasure.)

This is an anecdotal poem, one of a reader visiting the place of a book during a time of great sorrow in the world. Even with its closely observed details, the approach is partly removed, through another text: Ruefle is playing with aspects of the Anthony Trollope novel “Can You Forgive Her?” including the title, question about women’s lives, and a famously descriptive grouse hunting passage. There is a sense of something inexplicit within the clarity of the poem.

There is a consistent interest in languages; in this issue there is also Maureen N. McLane’s “Haptographic Interface” in the voice of a Keats bot, Matthew Zapruder’s “Tourmaline” about the language of stones—and calling to my mind Pablo Neruda’s gemstone poems—and Jessica Laser’s “Consecutive Preterite” about learning Biblical Hebrew with Christian women. And let’s look at “My Library” by Mosab Abu Toha, the last poem in the Summer issue.

This is another poem that references a book, Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place, tucked in a drawer beside talismans of Abu Toha’s past and broken communication. There’s a whole library of books belonging to him, intact, but with dead words. It is a poem of a poet, too, represented by that uncapped pen leaked into the words of a fellow Arab writer “like a ventilator”. This lyric has a remoteness, from Said’s rich memoir of exile that we are not reading, from the speaker’s life before his home was bombed, from the words that no longer communicate in his library of books, and a tangible, physical closeness in the items, places and relationships listed. Abu Toha’s second poetry collection is forthcoming from Knopf, but he’s the winner of an American Book Award and a Palestine Book Award for his first collection, and his journey out of Gaza has been written about in The New Yorker.

There are numerous works in translation in the summer issue, and one of them, a portion of the poem “A Drop of Ink” by Masaoka Shiki, translated by Abby Ryder-Huth, includes ten haiku-like thoughts approached ten ways. Among the poems Reddy is interested in are those that communicate on multiple levels and play with aspects of language as the poem’s subject.

The Spring issue has interviews with fiction writer Jhumpa Lahiri, and poet Alice Notley, and the Summer issue has interviews with fiction writer Mary Robison, and nonfiction writer Elaine Scarry.

“The Beautiful Salmon” by Joanna Kavenna reads, at first, like an essay on uncertainty and then becomes an anecdote of a disastrous dinner party. Theme is the dominant element on the first page, and while the main character has an interest in salmon as a living fish with unknown reasons for jumping, the other characters of story will view it as food. The writing is detailed and funny, highlighting the fear and failures the young man experiences after he is invited to a dinner party at his logic professor’s house. On the second page: “I was habitually terrified, and Alda Jónstótter was an apex of terror in the midst of my quotidian terrorscape.” We know he doesn’t eat fish, so of course he will be served salmon—the beautiful salmon—at a table full of philosophers. He’ll also be served a liquor called Black Death, and that will wipe away all insecurities, and the image of his own face in the mirror. Kavenna’s contributors note includes the titles of three of her novels.

One thing that this journal likes is another perspective on the familiar. In the same issue is an offbeat story “Concerning the Future of Souls” by Joy Williams, part of a forthcoming collection from Tin House, which is composed in numbered vignettes of Azrael, the angel of death, coping with numerous species dying. She reads part of it on The Paris Review’s podcast. Williams was the 2018 recipient of The Paris Review’s Hadada Prize, and has five published novels.

In the Summer issue, we can look at “Blue” by K Patrick:

This is a different take on a work story with a character who is having a bad day. It starts with setting and moves to character, although the costume is both. The actors are playing colors in a children’s television program. “Colors given the personalities of feral children.” The director is trying to film an episode with a dog and Blue, attracted to him, while hungover and uninspired, disrupts the scene, and annoys the other colors/actors. It’s not the show business Blue thought he’d be a part of when he was a kid. Patrick is Scottish and was nominated the same year for poetry and short fiction by The White Review. They are the author of a novel and a collection of poems. Another story is “That Summer” by Anne Serre, aptly beginning the summer issue, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, about a woman who visits her father and sister in separate Swiss mental institutions, at separate times from when another sister does, and begins to feel the burden of it. Serre is the author of 14 books.

So, yes The Paris Review is a challenging market to enter; many of the authors it publishes have multiple books published, and awards received. However, a few do not have any books published, or they have only one, such as Elijah Bailey, Patty Nash, Cindy JuYoung Ok, Cal Paule. Do you have stories or poems that match their editorial interests? Send one story or up to six poems. A recurring interest is for works with the structures and elements of language, layers of communication, offbeat perspectives on familiar ground, and other books and authors referenced within a work. They pay $1,000-3,000 per story, and $100 a poem. They award prizes each year to authors they have published.

Go for it. And consider buying a subscription, in print or digital.