Anne Carson

ANNE CARSON
March 12, 2013

LIVE from the New York Public Library
www.nypl.org/live
Wachenheim Trustees Room
PAUL HOLDENGRBER: Over the years now, I have asked the various writers and
artists and poets and translators to provide me with a biography of themselves in seven
words, a haiku of sorts if you wish or, if youre very modern, a tweet, and I asked Anne
Carson for her seven words, and this has happened quite a few times. I either get two
words, or I get twelve words, or I get nine words, at times I get seven words. In this
particular case I got twenty-five words and these words are not her words, but they seem
to define her, and these are the words of Hlderlin in his Hyperion and this is what she
gave me as her seven, twenty-five words. A thousand times in joy of heart have I
laughed at people who imagine a noble spirit cannot possibly know how to cook a
vegetable. Anne Carson.
LIVECarson_3.12Transcript
(applause)
ANNE CARSON: Good evening. How nice of you all to come. I think usually they do
conversations here. Thats the residue of the conversation and its just me tonight, but Im
going to read two quite different things, so it will be like theres two people here, and I
will explain that. Some years ago I wrote a book called Autobiography of Red about a
red-winged monster named Geryon and that told about his childhood and adolescence
and adventures as a young man. Red Doc> is a continuation of the adventures of that
same person when hes in late middle age. Eventually Ill read some from Red Doc>. The
hero of Red Doc> is Geryon but now he calls himself G, the initial G. And there are
two noteworthy characterological features of G. One, he tends to doze off in the middle
of the things, not because he has sleeping sickness, but just hes at that stage of late
middle age where theres a lot to worry about and sometimes its easier just to go to sleep.
Two, he is fascinated by Proust and when the novel begins he has just finished reading
Proust. It took him seven years. He read it in French a little bit every day, all seven
volumes, and having finished Proust hes now in that desert of after Proust. Those of you
who have read Proust will know what I mean, theres a kind of glacial expanse that opens
where nothing seems worth reading and all you want is for Proust to start over again, but
of course he cant and so you read, in a desultory way, things about Proust or criticism or
biography but its not the same and eventually you just give up and realize youll be in
Proust withdrawal for a while and then life will sort of go on in a grayer level. (laughter)
So in that interval G decided to write an essay about Proust, in fact about Proust and sleep
and more specifically the most interesting sleeper in Proust, who is Albertine, the
girlfriend in Proust, or one of them. The most important girlfriend in the novel. So Im
going to read you Gs essay on Albertine. Its in fifty-nine numbered paragraphs. He
numbers his paragraphs because it makes him feel like Wittgenstein.
(laughter)
The Albertine Workout
1. Albertine the name is not a common name for a girl in France, although Albert is
widespread for a boy.
2. Albertines name occurs 2,363 times in Prousts novel, more than any other character.
3. Albertine herself is present or mentioned on 807 pages of Prousts novel.
4. On a good 19 percent of these pages she is asleep.
5. Albertine is believed by some critics, including Andr Gide, to be a disguised version

of Prousts chauffer, Alfred Agostinelli. This is called the transposition theory.
6. Albertine constitutes a romantic, psychosexual, and moral obsession for the narrator of
the novel, mainly throughout volume 5 of Prousts seven volumes in the Pliade Edition
work.
7. Volume 5 is called La Prisonnire in French and The Captive in English. It was

declared by Roger Shattuck, a world expert on Proust, in his award-winning 1974 study
to be the one volume of the novel that a time-pressed reader may safely and entirely skip.
(laughter)
8. The problems of Albertine are from the narrators point of view, (a) lying (b)
lesbianism, and from Albertines point of view, (a) being imprisoned in the narrators
house.
9. Her bad taste in music, although several times remarked on, is not a problem.
10. Albertine does not call the narrator by his name anywhere in the novel, nor does
anyone else. The narrator hints that his first name might be the same first name as that of
the author of the novel, that is, Marcel. Lets go with that.
11. Albertine denies she is a lesbian when Marcel questions her.
12. Her friends are all lesbians.
(laughter)
13. Her denials fascinate him.
14. Her friends fascinate him, too, especially by their contrast with his friends, who are
gay but very closeted. Her friends parade themselves at the beach and kiss in restaurants.
15. Despite intense and assiduous questioning, Marcel cannot discover what exactly it is
that women do together. This palpitating specificity of female pleasure, as he calls it.
16. Albertine says she does not know.
17. Once Albertine has been imprisoned by Marcel in his house, his feelings change. It
was her freedom that first attracted him, the way the wind billowed in her garments. This
attraction is now replaced by a feeling of ennui, boredom. She becomes, as he says, a
heavy slave.
18. This is predictable given Marcels theory of desire, which equates possession of
another person with erasure of the otherness of her mind, while at the same time positing
otherness as what makes another person desirable.
19. And in point of fact how can he possess her mind if she is a lesbian?
20. His fascination continues.
21. Albertine is a girl in a flat sports cap pushing her bicycle across the beach when
Marcel first sees her. He keeps going back to this image.
22. Albertine has no family, profession, or prospects. She is soon installed, indeed
captive, in Marcels house. There, she has a separate bedroom. He emphasizes that she is
nonetheless, an obedient person, see above on Albertine as heavy slave.
23. Albertines face is sweet and beautiful from the front but from the side has a hookednosed aspect that fills Marcel with horror. He would take her face in his hands and
reposition it.
24. The state of Albertine that most pleases Marcel is Albertine asleep.
25. By falling asleep she becomes a plant, he says.
26. Plants do not actually sleep. Nor do they lie or even bluff. They do, however, expose
their genitalia.
27a. Sometimes in her sleep Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked.
27b. Sometimes then Marcel possesses her.
27c. Albertine appears not to wake up.
28. Marcel appears to think he is the master of such moments.
29. Perhaps he is. At this point, parenthetically, if we had time, several observations could
be made about the similarity between Albertine and Ophelia, Hamlets Ophelia, starting
from the sexual life of plants, which Proust and Shakespeare equally enjoy using as a
language of female desire. Albertine, like Ophelia, embodies for her lover blooming
girlhood and also castration, casualty, threat, and pure obstacle. Albertine, like Ophelia, is
condemned for a voracious sexual appetite whose expression is denied her. Ophelia takes
sexual appetite into the river and drowns it amid water plants. Albertine distorts hers into
the false consciousness of a sleep plant. In both scenarios, the man appears to be in
control of the script, yet he gets himself tangled up in the wiles of the woman. On the
other hand, who is bluffing whom is hard to say.
30. Albertines laugh has the color and smell of a geranium.
31. Marcel gives Albertine the idea that he intends to marry her but he does not. She
bores him.
32. Albertines eyes are blue and saucy. Her hair is like crinkly black violets.
33. Albertines behavior in Marcels household is that of a domestic animal, which enters
any door it finds open or comes to lie beside its master on his bed, making a place for
itself. Marcel has to train Albertine not to come into his room until he rings for her.
34. Marcel gradually manages to separate Albertine from all her friends, whom he
regards as evil influences.
35. Marcel never says the word lesbian to Albertine. He says, The kind of woman I
object to.
36. Albertine denies she knows any such women. Marcel assumes she is lying.
37. At first Albertine has no individuality. Indeed, Marcel cannot distinguish her from her
girlfriends or remember their names or decide which to pursue. They form a frieze in his
mind, pushing their bicycles across the beach, with the blue waves breaking behind them.
38. This pictorial multiplicity of Albertine evolves gradually into a plastic and moral
multiplicity. Albertine is not a solid object. She is unknowable. When he brings his face
close to hers to kiss, she is ten different Albertines in succession.
39. One night Albertine goes dancing with a girlfriend at the casino.
40. When questioned about this she lies.
41. Albertine is not a natural liar.
42. Albertine lies so much and so badly that Marcel is drawn into the game. He lies, too.
43. Marcels jealousy, impotence, and desire are all exasperated to their highest pitch by
the game.
44. Who is bluffing whom is hard to say. See above on Hamlet.
45. Near the end of Volume 5, Albertine finally runs away, vanishing into the night and
leaving the window open. Marcel fusses and fumes and writes her a letter in which he
claims he had just decided to buy her a yacht and a Rolls-Royce when she disappeared.
Now he will have to cancel these orders. (laughter) The yacht had a price tag of 27,000
francsabout 75,000 dollars, and was to be engraved at the prow with her favorite stanza
of a poem by Mallarm.
46. Albertines death in a riding accident on page 642 of Volume 5 does not emancipate
Marcel from jealousy. It removes only one of the innumerable Albertines he would have
to forget. The jealous lover cannot rest until he is able to touch all the points in space and
time ever occupied by the beloved.
47. There is no right or wrong in Proust, says Samuel Beckett, and I believe him. The
bluffing, however, remains a gray area.
48. Lets return to the transposition theory.
49. On May 30th, 1914, French newspapers reported that Alfred Agostinelli, a student
aviator, fell from his machine into the Mediterranean Sea near Antibes and was drowned.
Agostinelli, you recall, was the chauffer whom Proust in letters to friends admitted that
he not only loved but adored. Proust had bought Alfred the airplane, which cost 27,000
francs, about 75,000 dollars, and had had it engraved on the fuselage with a stanza of
Mallarm. Proust also paid for Alfreds flying lessons and registered him at the flying
school under the name Marcel Swann. The flying school was in Monaco. In order to spy
on Alfred while he was there, Proust sent another favorite manservant, whose name was
Albert.
50. Compare and contrast Albertines sudden fictional death by runaway horse with
Alfred Agostinellis sudden real-life death by runaway plane. Poignantly, both
unfortunate beloveds managed to speak to his or her lover from the wild blue yonder.
Agostinelli, before setting out for his final flight, had written a long letter, which Proust
was heartbroken to receive the day after the plane crash. Transposed to the novel, this exit
scene becomes one of the weirdest in fiction.
51. Several weeks after accepting the news that Albertine has been thrown from her horse
10
and killed, Marcel gets a telegram. You think me dead but Im alive and long to see you.
Affectionately, Albertine. Marcel agonizes for days about this news and debates with
himself whether he could possibly resume relations with her, only to realize that the
signature on the telegram has been misread by the telegraph operator. It is not from
Albertine at all but from another long-lost girlfriend, whose name, Gilberte, shares its
central letters with Albertines name.
52. One only loves that which one does not entirely possess, says Marcel.
53. There are four ways Albertine is able to avoid becoming entirely possessed: by
sleeping, by lying, by being a lesbian, or by being dead.
54. Only the first three of these can she bluff.
(laughter)
55. Proust was still correcting a typescript of La Prisonnire on his deathbed in

November 1922. He was fine-tuning the character of Albertine and working into her
speech certain phrases from Alfred Agonstinellis final letter.
56. Isnt it always a tricky question, the question whether to read an authors work in
light of his life or not?
11
57. Granted, the transposition theory is a graceless, intrusive, and saddening hermeneutic
mechanism. In the case of Proust it is also irresistible. Here is one final spark to be struck
from rubbing Alfred against Albertine, as it were. Lets consider the stanza of poetry that
Proust had inscribed on the fuselage of Alfreds plane, the same verse that Marcel
promises to engrave on the prow of Albertines yacht, from her favorite poem, he says. It
is four verses of Mallarm about a swan that finds itself frozen into the ice of a lake in
winter. Swans are of course migratory birds. This one for some reason failed to fly off
with its fellow swans when the time came. What a weird and lonely shadow to cast on
these two love affairs, the fictional and the real, what a desperate analogy to offer of the
lovers final wintry paranoia of possession. As Hamlet says to Ophelia, accurately but
ruthlessly, You should not have believed me.
58. Heres the stanza of Mallarm in somewhat rudimentary English: A swan of olden
times remembers that it is he, the one magnificent but without hope of setting himself
free. For he failed to sing of a region for living when barren winter burned all around him
with ennui.
59. Everything indeed is at least double. La Prisonnire, page 362.
Thats the end of that.
(applause)
12
Thanks.
So thats G as a researcher. Im going to read Red Doc> some other aspects of that same
psyche. So in the myth of Geryon, Geryon is a herdsman and has a herd of magic red
cattle that Herakles is commissioned to capture, which he does, legendarily. In this story
G has a different herd, they are musk oxen. And he has a friend named Sad But Great
who goes by the shorter name of Sad, who is a veteran of some war or other.
Typical nightherding songs gallop

their rhythms and tell of
love. G doesnt usually
sing to the herd at night.
He may talk to them listen
stand in the herd. Listen.
That community. A low
purple listening but with a
height to the sound. Them
listening. They direct it up
and out. They stand in a
circle facing away from the
center and the long guard hairs
hang down to brush their
13
ankles like pines. Like

queens. Like queens
dressed in pines. Musk
oxen are not in fact oxen
not castrated bulls nor do
their glands produce musk.
Much is misnomer in our
present way of grasping
the world. But pines do
always seem queenly as
they sway so grand and
anciently from the sky to
the ground. Motion is part
of listening. As the night
goes on, lets say hes there
for a number of hours the
motion changes. At first
they just shudder a bit like
any large entity come to
rest but gradually
imperially they begin
swaying. Then as one
rhythm they pass the sway
14
from shape to shape around

the circle its amplitude
increasing its warmth rising
from knees to hearts to eyes
its pressures rolling across
the large loose joints of the
shoulders and down the
long bones of the hips until
at some point with a
phrasing as simple as a
perfect aphorism one of
them spins up off its shanks
and performs a 360-degree
spin in air and returns to
place. Slotting itself into
the undulations of the others
as firmly as temptation into
I can resist anything but.
He slips from thought to
thought. Wilde Wild
Wildness does surely attract
him although what he
knows about it is not much.
15
Knows with the oxen that

they prefer common gorse
to willow shoots and can
balance the topheaviness
of their bodies by plaiting
their feet as they walk.
While with Sad he knows
dont mention warplay.
Funny word warplay.
Never says war or warfare.
Ive seen a lot of warplay
hed say. Warplay had me
pumped those years. Tip
of the spear. Flipswitch
inside. She hit the ground
75 saw the white bag 75
bullets tore her head off I
saw her hand. I wasnt
going to tell anyone back
home about. Oh it found its
way out it surfaced. I had a
tan when I came home no
wounds no cuts. Everyone
16
kissed me. Sure I sat by the

fire I talked to the old man.
There were the smells. The
bone beneath. Sweat broke
out on me at breakfast. I
didnt expect to come home
that was not in the plan.
Some point I guess the
brain cells just give out.
You read a hundred
military manuals you wont
find the word kill they trick
you into killing. You get
over it its ok. You have to.
Fear not tolerated. Take
you out back and shoot you
they say. Her eyeglasses in
the grass. Standard
questionnaire. Fine just
say fine. Numb yourself.
Wire-frame eyeglasses. Does it feel
good at first yes. Play.
Guns. Fire. Animals. You
17
know the Carthaginians

liked to use oxen for night
fighting. Im talking about
Hannibal Im talking about
the battle of Ager Falernus
217 BC. Like tanks but
more frightening. Theyd
tie lit torches to the horns
and stampede them toward
the enemy. The Romans
panicked. Some ran into the
herd. Some got knocked off
the path to the crags below
others tried to retreat and
were lost in the tundra
never seen again. But what
about Im asking what
happens when the torches
burn down to the horn to
the hair to the head to the
bone beneath. So much
human cruelty is simply
incidental is simply
18
brainless. Simply no
common sense. You could
take the entirety of the
common sense of humans
and put it in the palm of
your hand and still have
room for your dick.
Now we go inside Io. Io is the name of the lead musk ox of the herd. And Gs favorite.
Shes waking up.
It washes her up from

the bottom. Slow fluids of
dark slide past each other at
different speeds. Light she
ignores. Waking is gradual
lines of dark into sounds.
They line up. Before they
do is a moment of terror
happening every day she
every day forgets. Dry
little sound is a birds
neckbones sifting into place
19
to sing. Its eyes open and

widen. Birds with bigger
eyes sing first. Rackety
every day to hear this every
day forgets. A passing
snake splits by. Reds leap
the clouds in a wind stirring
everything tall all the way
out over the river and
pinwheeling back as the
membrane cracks. Open.
The heavens are perfect.
Perfection sounds round.
Good morning good Io.
Bird drops its note into the
round and round the note
goes circling the wall of the
world and stops. After
stops is a gap she listens
down into for someone who
comes takk takk takking
along she hears takk takk
slow down and
20
hesitate and takk takk

takking past. Someone
insists and someone will
hesitate at this hour. With
the heavens perfect and all
gazes wet and the bird
drops another note into the
round and round. Coolly
every day forgetting
all but this not the
difference between this and
winter does she long for it
winter. Where waking is.
Where two cloven halves of
her hooves clocked in ice
and blood crisping along
arteries at minus twentythree degrees is a glory to
her. Winter exists and
winter is never soon enough. She is awake.
Now we shall meet the glacier.
21
At a certain point in the story G and his companion Sad find themselves inside a glacier,
sort of lost. And theyre exploring, down a sort of slot in it.
The ice fault is a slot

in the ice as tall as a man
that vanishes back into
shadow. A smell of
something brisk and
incongruous
laundry?
sunlight? lingers at the

entrance. G drops to his
knees to peer in. Cold
stabs up through
his trousers. Sad has
retreated to the car and
started the engine which
echoes monstrously
everywhere. Moving out!
Sad yells putting the car in
reverse.
Was it Shackleton whose teeth shattered at something

something below zero G
22
once asked his brother

the biochemist and why.
Because teeth are porous
and can fill with droplets
of water which instantly
freeze in subzero
conditions. The glacial
walls go tapering away
from him down the ice
fault. He plunges into a
world at once solid and
dissolved but weirdly
shadowless.
He is colder than ever in his life. Vein
by vein as separate
numbnesses.
Heart
crashes in his chest

gelid wings clack on his
back. He can hear the
wings move but they are
someone elses wings
and his teeth are in pain.
Freeze means expand
23
means shatter said his

brother. G closes his
mouth.
That old clich

of polar adventure fatigue
flooding his body in
waves. This wonderful
longing to lie down surely
hes been walking for
centuries surely he should
stop and rest a moment
against one of those satiny
planes of ice that allure on
every side. Cucumber
Shackleton spam why is
everything draining away
why this silver ebbing and
flowing not quite reaching
his brain. He is so tired.
Pour the honey into the
Jar. He dozes off. A sudden
violent sneeze shatters
24
him in all directions. Oh

he says aloud lets not die
in the jar and with an
effort that seems to rip his
spine apart arches his
upper back. Stiffened
wing muscles pull hard
against their roots and
move into a lift. Pieces of
ice break from the
primaries and fall in a
shower. Again he strains
backward and up against
what seem like seams of
steel thinking maybe I
cant do this but all, all at
once the coverts jolt
terribly free and the
motion begins. He is
rising. Air grabs his
knees. Out of black
nothing into perfect
expectancy -- flying has
25
always given him this

sensation of hope -- like
glimpsing a lake through
trees, or that first steep
velvet moment the opera
curtains part -- he is
keening down the ice
fault. Soul fresh. Wings
wildawake. Front body
alive in a rush of freezing
air. He opens his mouth
in a cry as red sadness
pours away behind him
and the ancient smell of
ice floods every corner of
his skull.
Why birds have no

arms -- if you are human
you fly with arms straight
out in front and horizontal
to the ground. To give
least resistance. Of course
26
its exhausting. Dont fight

it just do it says G to his
arms. He visualizes little
pistons all over pumping
him forward and this helps
for a while but the ache is
spreading from his spine
in every direction. Down
the ice fault pours a steady
cold channel of headwind
against him. He knows he
is slowing and probably
looks ridiculous. Am I
turning into one of those
old guys in a ponytail and
wings he thinks sadly.
(laughter)
Something skims his

cheek. He waves at it
vaguely. Oh, great, predators. His
heart sinks. People talk of
27
eagles with a wingspan of

3 meters in the northern
regions. He begins to
imagine his own heroic
death. But
now the air is darkening
around him and strange
vectors dive whizz swoop
-- he gasps suddenly
realizing what it is. Not
predator. Ice bats! They
are blue-black. They are
absolutely silent. They
are the size of toasters.
And they are drafting him
down the ice fault with
eerie gentle purpose. A
spearhead in front and a
convoy each side. His
shoulders begin to relax.
Is there an etiquette for
this he should worry
about? Theoretically he
28
can gain 35% efficiency

by riding their wheels a
while. But it should be
some sort of exchange.
On the other hand theirs is
a volunteer intervention
and they do look tireless
despite all going so fast
theres a smell of burning
he is thinking it odd this
smell of burning when the
whole mass of them veers
around an ice bend and
arrives in a vast garage.
Ice bats go nimbly

and can stop on a dime.
Heres how you stop. Flap
both wings downward
creating a vortex above
the leading edge of each
wing this allows you to
hover. Then flap once
29
upward to release suction

as you glide from the
flight path in an attitude of
careless royalty and
subside onto some ledge
or throne with neatly
folded fingerbones. Gs
descent is less fine. He
slams into the
blue-blackness ahead of
him not expecting it
to stop. Or instantly
disperse. Each bat goes
whizzing its way into an
aperture in the back wall.
Batcatraz says a sign
nailed up there. G drops
to the ice floor stunned.
Clever of you to come in
the back way says a voice.
G looks up.
We shall leave him there looking up.
30
(laughter)
Things happen. Time passes. We arrive at a chapter called Time Passes.
Time passes time

does not pass. Time all
but passes. Time usually
passes. Time passing and
gazing. Time has no gaze.
Time as perseverance.
Time as hunger. Time in
a natural way. Time when
you were six the day a
mountain. Mountain time.
Time I dont remember.
Time for a dog in an alley
caught in the beam of your
flashlight. Time not a
video. Time as paper
folded to look like a
mountain. Time smeared
under the eyes of the
31
miners as they rattle down

into the mine. Time if you
are bankrupt. Time if you
are Prometheus. Time if
you are all the little tubes
on the roots of a gorse
plant sucking greenish
black moistures up into
new scribbled continents.
Time it takes for the postal
clerk to apply her lipstick
at the back of the post
office before the
supervisor returns. Time
it takes for a cow to tip
over. Time in jail. Time
as overcoats in a closet.
Time for a herd of turkeys
skidding and surprised on
ice. All the time that has
soaked into the walls here.
Time between the little
clicks. Time compared to
32
the wild fantastic silence

of the stars. Time for
the man at the bus stop
standing on one leg to tie
his shoe. Time taking
Night by the hand and
trotting off down the road.
Time passes oh boy. Time
got the jump on me, yes it
did.
And now he has returned home because his mothers in the hospital.
He brings lilacs
from the bush by the
corner of her house to
which she will probably
not return this time. Or
ever, and he leans his face
into them. The smell
plunges up. A vertical
smell. Wet purple
unvanquished. Her door is
33
shut. The ceiling tracks

flicker. No radios no
barbeques dont honk a
sign he saw on the way to
the hospital his mind
running like a dog off
its chain. Certain things
not decided have been
decided. He arrived on
the day after her surgery.
Has seen this corridor at
all hours. Notices again a
hesitancy in the light as if
it were trying not to shock
you with how scant it is.
He can hear the oxygen
machine through the door.
It shunts on. Runs a while.
Shunts off. He enters.
When he is there they

lift the stones together.
The stones are her lungs.
34
Some days go by. And now hes in her hospital room. Their last interview.
Not a casual
solitude. He and she.
Oxygen machine is
wheeled in and hooked
up. Her eyelids flutter but
do not open. He sits. The
room is hot. There is a
smell. Does Proust have a
verb for this. This
struggle she faces now her
onetime terrible date with
Night. First date last date
soul mate. Old song lyrics
scamper in him. He moves
the chair back to the
window. Shes counting
my soul mate gasps of
make my heart rate beat at a
fast rate. Oxygen. He
dozes. Waking to her avid
35
gaze. Wide open. She

holds in one hand the
makeup mirror in the
other a pair of tweezers.
Here she whispers. Lifts
tweezers. Maybe you can
do it. Taps the end of her
chin. He hesitates shrugs
pulls up his chair takes the
makeup mirror and peers
close. A beard of very
tiny white translucent
hairs all over her chin. He
moves the oxygen tube
aside and gingerly plucks
a few. Plucks a few more.
There are hundreds
thousands. He hates
waiting for her to wince.
She doesnt wince. Its
all right Ma you can hardly
see them he says. Her
eyes fall. Okay never
36
mind. Sadly she takes

the tweezers back. I look
awful dont I. No you look
like my ma. Now she
winces. In later years this
is the one memory he
wishes would go away and
not come back. And the
reason he cannot bear her
dying is not the loss of her
which is the future but
that the dying puts the two of
them now into this
nakedness together that is
unforgivable. They do not
forgive it. He turns away.
This roaring air in his
arms. She is released.
Some days pass.
Oxen stand quiet

under trees. Ios eyes are
37
closed. It is a
hard-blowing red evening.
The priest speaks about
the womans good life her
exemplary son her souls
situation in the palaces of
God. A short-notice choirs
attempts Ave Maria. The
coffin is wheeled out the
back door of the church
and onto a waiting van
someone closes the doors
of the van G watches it
drive off. And the
freedom stuns him. Here
it is the promised clearing
where great stags are
running at liberty. Say a
man has been carrying a
mother on the front of his
life all these years now
she is ripped off now his
life is light as air -- should he believe it?
38
One more day.
Shuffling recipes
coupons horoscopes
in a kitchen drawer he turns
up an old black-and-white
photograph of her posed in
dashing swim costume on
some long-ago back porch.
One leg forward like a
Greek kouros a cigarette
in the other hand she
glows as a drop of water
glows in sun. She looks
sexually astute in a way
that terrifies him he puts
this aside and all at once
the grainy photograph the
early marvel of her life
flung up at him a thing
hardly believable! knocks
him to his knees. He grips
39
his arms and weeps. Pain

catches the whole insides
of him and wrings it.
Oddly now remembering
his grandmothers wringer
washer silvergreen and
upright on a platform of
wet boards in her back
kitchen beside the
washing tubs. How
carefully hed been taught
to feed a piece of dripping
cloth between the two big
lips of the rollers while
she cranked the handle
and the cloth grabbed
forward to emerge on
the other side as a weird
compressed pane of itself.
He hadnt known his
grandmother long or well.
She smelled of Noxzema.
Didnt like doctors.
40
Believed in herbs and the

Bible. When the apostles
walked down the street
their shadows
would heal people she said. His
mother once told him a
story about her dying.
They never liked each
other hadnt visited for
years but someone
arranged a phone call. So
there they were mother
and daughter on the
phone separate cities
separate nights both
suffering from asthma and
so moved they couldnt
speak. I heard her
breathing, I knew what it
was his mother said. He
looks up now. Hed almost
forgot about the rain.
Unloading on the roof and
41
squandering down the

gutters. Rain continuous
since the funeral a
wrecking
rattling
bewildering leafy
knuckling mob of rain. A
rain with no instructions.
Listening to rain
he thinks how strange
all its surfaces sound like
theyre sliding up. How
strange his mother is lying
out there in her little
soaked Chanel suit. The
weeping has been arriving
about every seven
minutes. In the days to
come it will grow less.
Mothers in summer.
Mothers in winter.
Mothers in autumn.
42
Mothers in spring.
Mothers at altitude.
Mothers in solitude.
Mothers as platitude.
Mothers in spring.
Mothers banking their shots.

Mothers grackling their throats.
Mothers dumped from their boats.
In spring.
Mothers as ice.
Or when they are nice.
No one more nice
In spring.
Mothers ashamed and Ablaze and clear.
At the end.
As they are.
As they almost all are, and then.
Mothers dont come around Again.
In spring.
43
Thank you.
(applause)
44

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March 12, 2013

The Albertine Workout

3. Albertine herself is present or mentioned on 807 pages of Prousts novel.

4. On a good 19 percent of these pages she is asleep.

5. Albertine is believed by some critics, including Andr Gide, to be a disguised version

7. Volume 5 is called La Prisonnire in French and The Captive in English. It was

11. Albertine denies she is a lesbian when Marcel questions her.

12. Her friends are all lesbians.

13. Her denials fascinate him.

16. Albertine says she does not know.

20. His fascination continues.

25. By falling asleep she becomes a plant, he says.

27b. Sometimes then Marcel possesses her.

27c. Albertine appears not to wake up.

28. Marcel appears to think he is the master of such moments.

30. Albertines laugh has the color and smell of a geranium.

40. When questioned about this she lies.

41. Albertine is not a natural liar.

44. Who is bluffing whom is hard to say. See above on Hamlet.

48. Lets return to the transposition theory.

54. Only the first three of these can she bluff.

55. Proust was still correcting a typescript of La Prisonnire on his deathbed in

59. Everything indeed is at least double. La Prisonnire, page 362.

Thats the end of that.

Typical nightherding songs gallop

ankles like pines. Like

from shape to shape around

Knows with the oxen that

kissed me. Sure I sat by the

know the Carthaginians

It washes her up from

to sing. Its eyes open and

hesitate and takk takk

Now we shall meet the glacier.

The ice fault is a slot

sunlight? lingers at the

Was it Shackleton whose teeth shattered at something

once asked his brother

crashes in his chest

means shatter said his

That old clich

him in all directions. Oh

always given him this

Why birds have no

its exhausting. Dont fight

Something skims his

eagles with a wingspan of

can gain 35% efficiency

Ice bats go nimbly

upward to release suction

We shall leave him there looking up.

Things happen. Time passes. We arrive at a chapter called Time Passes.

Time passes time

miners as they rattle down

the wild fantastic silence

shut. The ceiling tracks

When he is there they

gaze. Wide open. She

mind. Sadly she takes

Some days pass.

Oxen stand quiet

One more day.