paris – Michigan Quarterly Review

paris

Paris Isn’t Like the Movies, Even When You’ve Seen Them All

In my formative years, my perception of a future beyond my parents’ brick rancher was entirely divorced from the concept of intersectionality. Even when life did have certain movie-like qualities (the choppiness of certain flashbacks, the surreal acceptance of a death in the family), they were not the ones I was taught to expect.

Paris Isn’t Like the Movies, Even When You’ve Seen Them All Read More »

In my formative years, my perception of a future beyond my parents’ brick rancher was entirely divorced from the concept of intersectionality. Even when life did have certain movie-like qualities (the choppiness of certain flashbacks, the surreal acceptance of a death in the family), they were not the ones I was taught to expect.

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Thirty years ago, when she was first here with her husband and two young children, they’d come in the summer—June—so that Otto could teach a study abroad course, and the city then was a lush racket of color. The pale blue and pink and gold ornamental bric-a-brac of Belle Époque architecture. Stoops cluttered with terra cotta pots spilling herbs. Window box gardens bursting geraniums the startling florescent red of she-didn’t-know- what. It was all exactly as she’d envisioned Paris since she’d first wanted to go as a sixteen-year-old sitting in a high school French class.

Revision Read More »

Thirty years ago, when she was first here with her husband and two young children, they’d come in the summer—June—so that Otto could teach a study abroad course, and the city then was a lush racket of color. The pale blue and pink and gold ornamental bric-a-brac of Belle Époque architecture. Stoops cluttered with terra cotta pots spilling herbs. Window box gardens bursting geraniums the startling florescent red of she-didn’t-know- what. It was all exactly as she’d envisioned Paris since she’d first wanted to go as a sixteen-year-old sitting in a high school French class.

On “Impressions of Paris”: An Interview with Cat Seto

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The elements that dance in my head are always both visual and narrative. Whether they are expressed in painting or writing, the essence of what I am trying to convey is one in the same for me.

On “Impressions of Paris”: An Interview with Cat Seto Read More »

The elements that dance in my head are always both visual and narrative. Whether they are expressed in painting or writing, the essence of what I am trying to convey is one in the same for me.

“Madame L. Describes the Siege of Paris,” by Beth Ann Fennelly

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It seemed almost a joke those first few days, / our handsome soldiers yawning with ennui. / When Bismarck sneered “The Paris bourgeoisie / will break after a day without eclairs,” / we laughed. Then had a day without eclairs.

“Madame L. Describes the Siege of Paris,” by Beth Ann Fennelly Read More »

It seemed almost a joke those first few days, / our handsome soldiers yawning with ennui. / When Bismarck sneered “The Paris bourgeoisie / will break after a day without eclairs,” / we laughed. Then had a day without eclairs.

A Postcard from Paris

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Traveling around Europe in the midst of all this, conducting dissertation research on the Czech interwar avant-garde and its relationship to other major artistic centers of that period, I could not but think about renewed border controls in the EU territory within the context of, and in comparison to, travel in the period between the two World Wars. At that time, Europeans (as well as travelers from further afield) enjoyed a newly open, post-war terrain. The physical movement of bodies, facilitated also by new and faster modes of travel, helped to open up an unprecedented level of exchange between artists and intellectuals of diverse backgrounds and languages. In that brief window of freedom of movement between the two World Wars, Paris was a hub of such traffic, and many visitors came from Prague.

A Postcard from Paris Read More »

Traveling around Europe in the midst of all this, conducting dissertation research on the Czech interwar avant-garde and its relationship to other major artistic centers of that period, I could not but think about renewed border controls in the EU territory within the context of, and in comparison to, travel in the period between the two World Wars. At that time, Europeans (as well as travelers from further afield) enjoyed a newly open, post-war terrain. The physical movement of bodies, facilitated also by new and faster modes of travel, helped to open up an unprecedented level of exchange between artists and intellectuals of diverse backgrounds and languages. In that brief window of freedom of movement between the two World Wars, Paris was a hub of such traffic, and many visitors came from Prague.

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