I had foolishly arrived with a scarce box of fancy liqueur chocs.
‘My dear, the last time
I ate
chocolate
was Nineteen Twenty-Eight.’
The half-smile of the poetess was
matched only by her half-rhyme.
Points of light flashed from a large blue agate
set on one of the rings
with which her fingers were laden.
Bangles jangled as the empress extended her hand with
a flourish
as though it were some form
of impish
sabre-rattling at the whim
of a capricious potentate.
‘Mais non . . . !’
She selected a chocolate-coated fragment the size of a crumb.
‘. . . Maybe I’ll simply choose the makeweight
en hommage à la poésie concrète!’
 |
| ‘She was impressively grand, quite eccentric . . . She wore her usual loose, dramatic robes, her high, Plantagenet headdress. Her lovely hands were covered with the most beautiful rings I had ever seen actually worn: they were deep, deep, coloured stones — aquamarines, blue agates, large and pool-like.’ (A Drink* with Dame Edith by Muriel Spark. Literary Review. February 1997.) |
Special Note: A ‘makeweight’ was, according to custom, a small, very thin, tablet of pure chocolate added, as occasion demanded, to a box of chocolates to meet trading standards when the tray was underweight.
*Dame Edith’s favourite tipple was, apparently, Gin-and-Pineapple-Juice.
See also: Variation on a Theme by Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2019/10/variation-on-theme-by-edna-st-vincent.html
See also: Premature embalmment of anti-art
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2016/04/dotty-premature-embalmment-of-anti-art.html
See also: Poésie trouvée, the unsought text
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/colour-blind.html
and
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/poesie-trouvee-unsought-text.html
•
Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence,
see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
and Listen Close to Me (2011)
and A Bad Case (2014)
