My mamaw used to say, ‘I thought life was just one damned thing after another until I realized it’s the same damned thing over and over.’ ” ...

Dreams are trash. Dreams are ash. A man from Los Angeles left a small ziplock bag of his ashes to me in his will.” ...

For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages.

My friend gave me the packet of letters to keep, and I knew that one day I would try to make something out of it.” ...

Everybody likes ghazals. Or they do when they learn what they are: A ghazal is a poetic form originating in and strongly associated with the Islamic cultural sphere. It is a medieval thing—or what ...

Look closely at any moon landing photograph and you will find fine gray plus signs in a grid across each one—plus signs that allowed for distortion to be corrected + for distance and height to be ...

One of Jane Austen’s many mind-bending skills was her ability to wrest so much drama from a world that was, by present-day standards, almost unfathomably static. Austen’s novels are preindustrial time ...

The Paris Review is a literary magazine featuring original writing, art, and in-depth interviews with famous writers.

My new job came with a research stipend. I’d never had one before—a few grand that would renew each year for five years and then end. What could I use it for? “Anything,” I was told, which seemed ...

May 20, 2025 – On retro screen savers, Bianca Rae Messinger’s pleasureis amiracle, and Grandma’s iMac.

May 12, 2025 – “It turns out that for Ashbery, the big theory was psychoanalysis, the process by which secondhand knowledge becomes firsthand.” ...

Tom Fitzharris and Edward Gorey met one afternoon in 1974 when Fitzharris, long a fan of Gorey’s books and illustrations, bumped into him outside of the Town Hall, the performance space in Midtown ...