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Claudia Rankine. Photo: John Lucas. Courtesy of Graywolf Press.

This week, The Paris Reviewis dwelling on politics, literature, and the U.S. election. Read on for Claudia Rankine’s Art of Poetry interview, Matthew Baker’s short story “Why Visit America,” and Martha Hollander’s poem “Election Night.”

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Claudia Rankine, The Art of Poetry No. 102
Issue no. 219, Winter 2016

The relationship between public engagement and private thought are inseparable for me. I worked on Citizenon and off for almost ten years. I wrote the first piece in response to Hurricane Katrina. I was profoundly moved by the events in New Orleans as they unfolded. John and I taped the CNN coverage of the storm without any real sense of what we intended to do with the material. I didn’t think, obviously, that I was working on Citizen.

But for me, there is no push and pull. There’s no private world that doesn’t include the dynamics of my political and social world. When I am working privately, my process includes a sense of what is happening in the world.

Why Visit America
By Matthew Baker
Issue no. 230, Fall 2019

And yet that winter we found ourselves united by a common sentiment. We were fed up with our country. The executives were busy making donations that funded the campaigns of the politicians, the politicians were busy passing laws that protected the interests of the executives, and pretty much nothing else seemed to be getting done. We were antigovernment, we were anticorporate, but mostly we were normal people who couldn’t afford to buy an election and had come to understand that our votes didn’t mean shit.

Election Night
By Martha Hollander
Issue no. 145, Winter 1997

The first Tuesday in this warm November
brushes Long Island in a last caress
before winter repels our communities
like a storm door slamming on a windy day.
Gentle enough, in fact, for the beach.
Here to beckon to the Indian sunset
are joggers with their superb, joyful dogs,
a few rebels beating the commute,
and a pair of lovers murmuring to the crunch
of sand in the folds of their heavy leather jackets.
Change, they all desire change, a radiant
new face, or a world awash in truth …

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