Friday Poem

On Love, Proust, Chorus Girls, and Martha Nussbaum

I’ve been thinking about trying to read Proust

again. The legendary chorus girls of my youth

were said to carry him, volume by volume, from

try-out to try-out, perusing him in the Modern

Library Edition between calls, propping him up

on magnificent black-tighted legs. I sat for days

within the budding grove of the Stage Delicatessen,

Swann’s Way open before me, but never found

such a one. I kept imagining all I needed to do

was be at the right time in the right place with

the right book in my hand, and true love would

appear, ex nihilo, so to speak.

I read people who

say they love Proust – some I even believe.

Martha Nussbaum I believe. I love her talk

about Proust, or Henry James and, say,

The Golden Bowl. She makes me love the idea

of The Golden Bowl. In fact, she makes me love

the idea of Martha Nussbaum, though she’s an

Aristotelian while I’m nothing but a Platonist

in the Academy pointing to the idea of the book,

while Martha reads the thing itself.

So I picture

her as as a chorus girl, a fling before philosophy,

after a try out for Damn Yankees, maybe, humming

“Whatever Lola Wants” while paging through

her first Proust at the Stage Delicatessen,

while I keep on ordering a pastrami on rye

at the wrong time unaware of the fragility

of goodness. Now all I have from then is this

remembrance of things which never came to pass.

by Nils Peterson