Reading for the Plot

Abstract

Reading for the Plot Christina Pugh (bio) Please don't ever ask me to do it—to run throughthe plot points A, B, C, and D, as Peter Brooksdiscusses in his famous book of the same name.My mind is allergic to chronology. Do you feelthe unquenchable thirst for plot that Brooks describes?OK, then, here's a plot for you: last night, I sawtwo guys in a movie. They separated and thengot back together. I was happy for them, but alsoknew they would: clearly, they loved one another.That's it! But now I'm looking at a sealike imprintof the Blue Ridge mountains over stands of shaggilydeciduous trees—that foothill supplementI often try to smooth out from my window'svantage point. It will never be the hot, blanksatin on a horse's back. But on this hazy morning,I see less mountain than a tissue washed to neartransparency—earth penciled blue and thenswimming into the sky's suffusion: every viewscaffolded by little movements underneath,unveiling and veiling the ozone layer… so what overruns a plot is imperceptibleplotting under a placid thing, what Heraclitusknew as never the same river twice. That's the waywe fall in love with fluxion. But isn't any riveralso continuity? If it weren't, or so the philosopherssay, it would no longer be itself—but just a drystream bed abraded from its own erstwhile rivering.So I'll believe in the continuous: that's ecology.Still, is there any plot to salvage from the novel?Brooks says Flaubert's Sentimental Education triesto drown its own plot—becoming dissolution,liquefaction, liquidation. I find this to be quite [End Page 150] the luxuriant list, especially those last twolicking one another. And I like to imagineall those loves and revolutions sailing out to sea.Still, the best liquefaction I know will alwayssilken Robert Herrick's girlfriend Julia's clothes. [End Page 151] Christina Pugh Christina Pugh has published five books of poems including Stardust Media (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and Perception (Four Way Books, 2017), named one of the top poetry books of 2017 by Chicago Review of Books. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, and other publications. A former Guggenheim fellow and Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, she teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Copyright © 2020 Emerson College