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A Public Space

No. 06

Luc Sante translates Arthur Rimbaud; John Ashbery translates Pierre Martory; Italy Abroad, a portfolio by Will Schutt with Antonio Tabucchi, Salvatore Niffoi, Dacia Maraini, and others; an illustrated guide to running for mayor in Chicago by Peter Orner and Eric Orner; Peyton Marshall on famous ancestors and familial bonds; Keith Lee Morris drives blind; Dubravka Ugresic sets off alarms; stories by Gary Amdahl, Sana Krasikov, and more.

Table of Contents



 

If You See Something

All Foreigners Beep

I was in Stockholm recently.

Dubravka Ugresic


 

If You See Something

Letters Home

Bright: How I’d describe the sky over Reykjavik at 11:36 pm.

Colleen Kinder


 

If You See Something

Adventures for the Contemporary Explorer

I was sitting in the living room the other night trying to get through Middlemarch, the same thing I’ve been doing for most of this decade, and my ten-year-old son and his buddy kept interrupting to ask questions as part of this game they were playing.

Keith Lee Morris


 

If You See Something

The Sound of Being Alone

Inside my head are sounds.

Martha Cooley


 

Fiction

Debt

Lev has worried all afternoon that his niece and her husband won’t find his house.

Sana Krasikov


 

Feature

Politics Is a Craft

He had them.

Peter Orner


 

Feature

From the Hills of Fauquier County

In September 2003, the descendants of John Marshall, the fourth and arguably greatest Chief Justice of the United States, gathered at the Richmond Marriott for a weekend of cocktails and lectures.

Peyton Marshall


 

Poetry

The Stolen Heart

My sad heart slobbers on the deck, / My heart all smeared with navy plug

Arthur Rimbaud


 

Poetry

Two Poems

The bridge once passed

Pierre Martory


 

Poetry

Two Poems

My friend, I could wander / Around out here for years

Tom Yuill


 

Poetry

The Lamps Unlit

It is difficult to write an aubade, / a song about noon, or a few crepuscular lines

Billy Collins


 

Poetry

Lamentology

I was almost completed, but I could not blink.

Cathy Park Hong


 

Poetry

Two Poems

Mesmerizing / & insistent as they might / be, even educated hands are / not thoughtful.

Zach Barocas


 

Poetry

Want

Dusk births a weird teeming.

Claire Hero


 

Poetry

Two Poems

I’m glum about your sportive flesh in the empire of blab, / And the latest guy running his trendy tongue like a tantalizing surge / Over your molars, how droll.

Major Jackson


 

Poetry

The Situation/Evidence

Open hangs his head and begins to mumble.

Lisa Lubasch


 

Poetry

Two Poems

I had a dream I was killed in my sleep

Dorothea Lasky


 

Poetry

Flower Cart

The pool was covered by a sheath of leaves

Lisa Fishman


 

Fiction

Birch Memorial

Last weekend Sugu went back to Ipoh town.

Preeta Samarasan


 

Focus

Focus: Italy: Detecting New Souls in the Old Forms

Italy is a country awash in contradictions: short on nationhood, long on national heritage; Catholic in name and skeptical by nature; intensely proud yet eager to point out its own flaws; a place too puzzling for words that nonetheless elicits the unequivocal sigh, Only in Italy.

Will Schutt


 

Focus

The Dead at the Table

For starters, he would tell him that what he liked best about the new house was the view of the Unter den Linden, because it made him feel at home still.

Antonio Tabucchi


 

Focus

Feeding on Mystery: An Interview with Marcello Fois re: Noir, Regionalism, and Geography as a Cloak

One evening a few years ago in March, I drove from Bologna to Ferrara.

Marcello Fois


 

Focus

The Eyewitness Effect: An Interview with Antonio Scurati re: The Writer in the Twenty-First Century

For the past few years, Antonio Scurati has engaged in a pointed, provocative controversy with what might be called the old guard of the Italian intelligentsia, which Scurati considers to be locked into useless, obsolete forms of political and cultural engagement. 

Antonio Scurati


 

Focus

Return to Baraule

His eighth novel, Return to Baraule, opens in typical Niffoi fashion: a mysterious figure, Carmine Pullana, sickly, sixty years old, arrives in a backwater island village called Baraule.

Salvatore Niffoi


 

Focus

Hunger

The child opens her eyes and discovers it’s still dark out.

Dacia Maraini


 

Focus

An Hour of Hate

For a good many years last century I carried weapons.

Erri De Luca


 

Fiction

The Cold, Cold Water

Oh, the cold, cold water.

Gary Amdahl

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