The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel

Author:Haven Kimmel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780385507301
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2002-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

AT INTERMISSION

Having lost inspiration for Tunnel, Langston decided to take the alternative route, and certainly the more widely received literary wisdom: write what you know. There were, she believed, a number of novels available to her, given what she knew. In addition to the postmodern subterranean novel and the academic précis, she also had an idea for a book-length sonnet sequence, a dramatic psychological study of a certain type of man, written in heroic/epic form. She turned her attention to it again, after having avoided it for a few months.

In the year she had worked on the sonnet sequence, she had only gotten as far as the first sonnet, and then only as far as the title. She had spent many a frustrating hour trying to produce the perfect synthesis of

form and soul. The series was entitled The Narcissist Café, or alternately, At the Narcissist’s Café.

She took out the sheets on which she had been working for a year. In addition to the title she had many options for a first line, most of which had been crossed out:

We meet on your chosen firing ground.

You ask to meet on the firing ground.

The tables conceal your firing ground.

The waitresses . . .

. . . and many others, all with the requisite ten syllables, and all flubbed by the wretched meter of “firing ground.” She had tried variations on the theme, by using “hanging tree,” and once, “hanging judge.” The margins contained her extensive notes on the themes of the poem, the matter of the beloved as judge and/or executioner; the betrayed as crucified innocent. In the progressive logic of the poem the speaker is asked to meet her beloved; he breaks her heart at her favorite table, the table he always employs for such tasks, and in the end, he asks her the same questions he has asked of all the others: How broken are you? How much have I hurt you? How long will it take you to heal? How perfect was I? This theme would be highlighted by the repetition of both “I” and “eye,” employing theories of the male gaze.

Langston studied her notes carefully. She tapped her pencil on the table. She rubbed Germane’s fur with her feet. The whole poem was right there in front of her. She had done the architectural work flawlessly, she felt. So where was the poem? What labor had she not performed? Perhaps she needed to do more reading . . . perhaps she needed to study with more breadth the phenomenon of narcissism. She made a note to herself to look into a diagnostic manual the next time she visited the public library in Hopwood.

She rubbed Germane’s belly and thought about a certain café in Bloomington. She could see it all very clearly; the stained glass windows taken from an abandoned church. The thin, bored waitresses who studied dance. The wide plank floors, the way they held light from the Tiffany lamps; the corridor between the tables and the bar, where there remained, inset in the floor, models of human feet cast in brass.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.