To lose your hair, to lose your temper,
if you see what I mean, your precious time,
to fight a losing battle,
losing height and lustre, sorry,
never mind, to lose on points,
let me bloody well finish,
to lose blood, father and mother,
to lose your heart, lost long ago
in Heidelberg, all over again,
without batting an eye, the charm
of novelty, forget it, to lose
your civil rights, I get the message,
to lose your head, by all means,
if it can’t be helped,
to lose Paradise Lost, what next,
your job, the Prodigal Son,
to lose face, good riddance,
two World Wars, one molar,
half a stone of overweight,
to lose, lose, and lose again, even
your illusions lost, long ago,
so what, let’s not waste another word
on love’s labour lost, I should say not,
to lose sight of your lost sight,
your virginity, what a pity, your keys,
what a pity, to get lost in the crowd,
lost in thoughts, let me finish,
to lose your mind, your last penny,
no matter, I’ll be through in a moment,
your lost causes, all sense of shame,
everything, blow by blow,
alas, even the thread of your story,
your driver’s license, your soul.
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
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.
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