‘The seminary building, parked smack in the middle of the campus, looked west to Davis Hall (women), south to another women's dorm building, and east to the vocationless, unharnessed men of Beast Hall. What did they expect, with so many earthly reminders of flesh around us? Out of the fourteen young men who discerned the call, few, very few, made it to ordination.’
There are problems with this picture. One, we’re not all there, and two, the photo itself is impure. The man in the middle, without a hat, is a Yankee, somewhere from Peoria or Des Moines or one of the right-angled states of the Midwest. He was a friend; but he was not one of us. We were from Tenn…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘The burden in law on the pregnant person is to show that they are at risk, in need; they must ask, and hope, rather than demand.’
Memoir by Andrea Brady.
‘When I was growing up in his house, religion was his crutch, a justification for his behaviour.’
Kevin Childs on growing up queer in a Catholic household.
‘I used to be ashamed of it, though I’m not sure what exactly felt shameful.’
On training to be an opera singer.
‘A state of grace, Lispector writes, should be short-lived, episodic.’
Sinéad Gleeson on Clarice Lispector’s Brazil.
‘As I began to flip through a literary magazine, I was stopped by a photograph of myself as a young girl, standing beside my college professor.’
‘But what is an unencumbered gaze? And where does it begin to see?’
Esther Kinsky introduces a photoessay by Muhammad Salah.
