A 35-year-old writer in a complicated relationship becomes infatuated with a famous older poet who teaches at the same university. Initial attraction centers on her intelligence, appearance, and especially her wealth and fame. The narrator’s desire includes fantasies of domination and humiliation, alongside surprise at the poet’s effect. They meet to discuss a poetry collection that does not exist, but the conversation gives way to an overnight connection. Over time, a terminal cancer diagnosis accelerates the relationship’s development into familiar rhythms and habits. The story is told in close first person, with unreliable narration and increasing fantasy elements surrounding the bond between the narrator and the poet, later named Kingfisher for her love of birds.
"Our unnamed narrator is a beautiful 35-year-old writer in a complicated but loving relationship with the equally beautiful but somewhat boring Michael. The object of his attentions is a famous poet, 17 years his senior, running a popular course at the same university that he, in a minor way, is also attached to. He hardly knows her, but he knows that he wants to be inside her. It's all a bit of a shock. A woman! What was the world coming to?"
"Well, she's smart, good-looking, well-dressed, not to mention rich and famous. It is this last fact that seems to exert, at least to begin with, the greatest hold over the infatuated narrator. I wanted to be her, to be like her, to have her success and to know the people she knew. But also, as he admits to himself as they sit quietly on a park bench watching the ducks, he would like to subjugate her, to push her down, to render her imperious intelligence stupid with the weight of my body, with my younger, harder form."
"Told in the close first person, Kingfisher recounts perhaps unreliably, and with increasing elements of fantasy the complicated relationship that develops between the narrator and the poet, or Kingfisher, as he later names her, due to her love of birds. They begin by meeting to discuss the narrator's forthcoming (and in fact nonexistent) poetry collection. One thing leads to another, and the night passes with poetry left undiscussed."
"At this point, the narrator is still rather surprised by the turn things have taken (I thought she thought I was gay. I thought I thought I was gay). But over time and hastened by a terminal cancer diagnosis they settle into the rhythms and habits of a regular loving relationship. Kelly shr"
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