Thursday, December 22, 2011

Chimes Chinoiserie



Chimes Chinoiserie
__________________

Miss Proust

“the past is—
within the present”
—Richard Howard,
“An Introduction to
In Search of Lost
Time,” Paper Trail

Denise wasn’t trying to—
Evoke her past, such efforts
Were useless and hidden
Beyond realm or reach

It was by chance she—
Discovered it was the
Discoursing person who
Is the self who writes

Narrowly squeaking thru—
Proustian textual revisions
The strength & courage to
Know buried bent Allegory

Le Temps retrouvé—
Nude young Caloub there
In Denise’s West Chimes
Apartment smirking

Caloub, Speak

“It’s from adolescents
who last long enough
that life makes its
old men”—Marcel Proust

Denise’s desire to write—
Thwarted by her limitations
Learning to subvert lust
Into a retrouvé circle

Rediscovering it—
Regaining it, repossessing it
Time regained, realized
Thru displaced Narrative

A continuous allegory—
Product of a gay self
Sanguine, sullen, sulky
Caloub biting her neck

The things Caloub said—
What he made Denise do
In bed, the way she lost it
Almost as bad as him

Two-Way

“The discovery that
the two “ways”
are the same”
—Richard Howard,
“An Introduction to
In Search of Lost
Time,” Paper Trail

Serving the design—
Fulfilling the allegory
The “other” poetic drama
The maker’s subtle wrist

Variant readings—
Canceled plausible
Versions, androgynous
Agon about when to

Allegory compels her—
Discourse into Novel
“Doubling” recorded as
Denise et Caloub

One more grad student—
Notes later these decisions
Denise as gay Leonardo
Using the fake linear trick

The Narrator

“The nature of that
Narrator and his strangely
absent presence”
—Richard Howard,
“An Introduction to
In Search of Lost
Time,” Paper Trail

How to subtract—
Proust’s “empty” narrative’s
Discovery & possession of
Time regained

How to push a Novel—
Over the edge of the
“False permanence of
biography…”

Past the lit crit—
Symbolist ditherings
Into the vast abyss of
Repudiation = modernity

“Everything’s a failure”—
Exhaustion, realist ruins
The Narrative that’s lost
Les temps retrouvé



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