#I love Christine de Pizan and read through The Book of the City of Ladies for one of my undergraduate Literature classes.

[heather123fan-blog]

Day 5: Thursday, 11th July — Favorite woman writer: Christine de Pizan (b. 1364, Venice, Italy; d. 1430, Poissy, France)

Christine de Pisan (Christine de Pizan) was a medieval writer and historiographer who advocated for women’s equality. Her works, considered to be some of the earliest feminist writings, include poetry, novels, biography, and autobiography, as well as literary, political, and religious commentary. De Pisan became the first woman in France, and possibly Europe, to earn a living solely by writing.

De Pisan was raised at court in Paris with her father, Thomas de Pisan, the astrologer and secretary to King Charles V of France. Although her educational upbringing is unclear, through her father’s court appointment, she did have access to a variety of exceptional libraries. In 1380, de Pisan married Etienne du Castel, a nobleman from Picardy. He was an unusual husband for the time in that he supported her educational and writing endeavors. When he died in 1390, de Pisan was only in her early twenties. After receiving attention from patrons in the court for her poetry and love ballads dedicated to her husband, she decided that rather than remarry she would support her three children and newly widowed mother through her writing. While she was still establishing herself as a writer, de Pisan also transcribed and illustrated other authors’ works.

Her own writing, in its various forms, discusses many feminist topics, including the source of women’s oppression, the lack of education for women, different societal behaviors, combating a misogynistic society, women’s rights and accomplishments, and visions of a more equal world. De Pisan’s work, though critical of the prevailing patriarchy, was well received, as it was also based in Christian virtue and morality. Her writing was especially strong in rhetorical strategies that have since been extensively studied by scholars.

Her two most famous works are the books Le Dit de la Rose (The Tale of the Rose), 1402, and Le Tresor de la Cité des Dames (The Book of the City of Ladies), 1405. Le Dit de la Rose was a direct attack on Jean de Meun’s extremely popular Romance of the Rose, a work about courtly love that characterized women as seducers, which de Pisan claimed was misogynistic, vulgar, immoral, and slanderous to women. She later published Letters on the Debate of the Rose as a follow-up to the controversial debate.

In Le Tresor de la Cité des Dames, de Pisan has a discussion with three “ladies,” introduced as Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, about the oppression of women and the misogynistic subject matter and language that contemporary male writers used. Under the author’s guidance, the women form their own city, where only women of virtue reside. In the book, she writes, “Moreover, it is just as applicable to ladies, maidens, and other women to have worldly prudence in regulating their lives well, each according to her estate, and to love honour and the blessings of a good reputation” (Lawson, trans., The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 110).

Although de Pisan’s work was primarily written for and about the upper classes (the majority of lower class women were illiterate), her writing was instrumental in introducing the concept of equality and justice for women in medieval France. De Pisan lived the majority of her life in relative comfort, and in 1418, she entered a convent in Poissy (northwest of Paris), where she continued to produce work, including her last poem Le Ditie de Jeanne d’Arc (Song in Honor of Joan of Arc), 1429.

Christine de Pisan at The Dinner Party

Christine de Pisan is represented in her plate as an abstracted butterfly form painted in swirling, vibrant hues of red and green. Chicago describes the form as having “one wing raised in a gesture of defense, to symbolize her efforts to protect women” (Chicago, The Dinner Party, 86).

The runner is done in tones from the same color palette, and jagged flame-like forms adorn the edges. The wavy, colorful pattern is characteristic of Bargello needlepoint, also called “flame stitch” or “Florentine stitch,” thought to have originated in medieval Italy. According to Chicago, this design, which appears to be encroaching on the plate, represents the suffocating Renaissance-era constraints on women (Chicago, The Dinner Party, 86).

On the front of the runner, embroidered on the illuminated capital “C” in her name, is a scene based on an illuminated manuscript in which de Pisan presents a volume of her work to the queen of France. This book represents her writing as a gift of knowledge and feminism that was offered to the medieval world.

[city-of-ladies]

In 1405, the French writer Christine de Pizan was finishing her Book of the City of Ladies. A response to sexist prejudices and literature, her writings highlighted women's contributions to history and society.

Advocating in favor of women’s education, she wrote of Novella d’Andrea, daughter of Italian jurist Giovanni d’Andrea (c.1275-1348):

To give you a similar, more recent example, without going back to ancient history, there is the case of the famous jurist Giovanni Andrea. He taught at Bologna not quite sixty years ago. He, too, did not share the opinion that education would corrupt women, so he had his lovely and cherished daughter Novella educated in literature and law. When he was busy with other tasks and unable to lecture his students, he would send Novella in his place to present the lecture. In order to ensure that her beauty did not distract her audience, she lectured from behind a small curtain. In that way, she complemented her father and sometimes lightened his load. He loved her so much that he wanted to commemorate her name, so he authored an important legal treatise and named it after his daughter Novella. 

Christine draws a parallel between hers and Novella's story. Her father was supportive of her academic pursuits but her mother wanted her to focus on more traditionally feminine tasks such as spinning and weaving. 

The veracity of this story has been disputed. While some scholars have doubted it, others consider it reliable. Christine’s father had been an academic contemporary of Giovanni d’Andrea at Bologna and was still in contact with his family by 1351. She could thus have learned of Novella through him. 

It is sometimes written that Novella’s sister, Bettina, taught law at Padua. This is a sixteenth-century invention based on Novella’s story. It is however true that Giovanni d’Andrea used to ask his wife’s advice on legal questions. 

Feel free to check out my Ko-Fi if you like what I do! Your support would be much appreciated.

Further reading 

Clarke Peter D., “Giovanni d’Andrea”, in: Condorelli Orazio, Domingo Rafael (ed.), Law and the Christian Tradition in Italy: The Legacy of the Great Jurists            

De Pizan Christine, The Book of the city of ladies

[writinginthesecrettrees]

old essays

Wanna read an essay I wrote for a lit class a few years back? Comparing Clytaemnestra in Agamemnon and Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies. 

          In the history of the western world, women have gotten a raw deal. Women have been seen as weak, conniving, scheming, jealous, and cowardly.  When Aegisthus stays behind as all the other men go off to war with Troy, he is called a “womanly creature” (Agamemnon 1916).  Christine de Pizan mentions one of the Catos, a respected orator of Rome, “who declared that if woman hadn’t been created, man would converse with the gods,” (de Pizan 127).  In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, the characters of Clytaemnestra and Christine both face these negative views of women and femininity.  Their responses to their worlds show both the best and the worst of what feminism can be.

           In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra has been left to hold together Agamemnon’s kingdom while he goes to war (over her sister!) immediately after killing their daughter.  And she does hold it together for ten years, all the while not knowing whether her husband would return or not.  Just that much requires a strong intellect, especially with the way the people of Argos constantly doubt her.  She is considered “too ambitious, far too arrogant,” (Agamemnon 1687) and too competitive (Agamemnon 1109) to be womanly.  The prevailing view of women in Argos is that they are irrational and rather stupid.  It’s “the nature of a woman— / to give thanks before the truth appears” (Agamemnon 575-576) because “[t]he proper order in a woman’s mind / is easily upset,” (Agamemnon 578-579).  The chorus leader questions Clytaemnestra even while pretending to follow her rule, saying that “[w]ith our king far away, the man’s throne / is empty—so it’s appropriate for us / to pay allegiance to his wife,” (Agamemnon 308-310) but then attributing her knowledge to a dream or a rumor until Clytaemnestra explains that she “organized these messengers of fire, / setting them up in sequence, one by one,” (Agamemnon 375-376). Upon being given this evidence of her cleverness and rationality, the leader says only “You speak wisely, like a prudent man,” (Agamemnon 425).

           The challenges to her intelligence and spirit bring out anger in her.  She responds to the chorus’ questions with sarcasm, saying “[a]s if I’d listen to some dozing brain,” (Agamemnon 329) and telling them that they are “insulting [her] intelligence, / as if [she] were a youngster” (Agamemnon 331-332).  After killing Agamemnon in a spectacularly bloody manner, Clytaemnestra accuses the chorus leader of “testing [her], as if [she] were some silly woman,” (Agamemnon 1657). In the end, she succumbs to the expectations of her time: she turns to Aegisthus to protect her and be “loyal to [her] now / as always, [her] shield” (Agamemnon 1698-1699), and becomes a secondary character in the end with all credit for her deeds given to a man.  It is a product of the time: Clytaemnestra is a strong woman, written by an ancient Greek man, and Aeschylus’ writing is shaped by his society.

           In The Book of the City of Ladies, de Pizan, through the character she created, encounters similar views of women. Her reaction to these views is markedly different than the ancient queen’s.  Clytaemnestra tries to conform to her society’s standards, presenting herself as the perfect model of a noble lady (Agamemnon 728-738) and saying “what a woman out to say,” (Agamemnon 1959), until she cannot suppress her resentment any longer and explodes rather dramatically in anger.  Christine “[begins] to examine [her]self and [her] own behavior as an example of womankind,” (de Pizan 113) and uses her observations to counter the claims against women.

           De Pizan presents herself as a scholar, interested in nothing more than her studies.  Like many students, she takes study breaks.  Where today’s student turns to Netflix, Christine “[puts] aside these difficult texts and [finds] instead something amusing and easy to read from the works of the poets” (de Pizan 112).  In fact, the book she chooses is one that “was said to be written in praise of women” (de Pizan 112).  The rarity of finding a work that praised women shows the culture that Christine has known all her life.   The very idea that most works available to her would be critical of women and only concerned with highlighting their flaws is indicative of a pervasive cultural misogyny. In the course of her studies, Christine has read works by “all manner of philosophers, poets and orators too numerous to mention, who all seem to speak with one voice and are unanimous in their view that female nature is wholly given up to vice,” (de Pizan 113).  The many accounts of the vile nature of women, including a book that supposedly celebrated women rather than reviling them became a harsh critique of the wrongs of women, created a hostile environment for Christine.

           Christine’s conclusion, “that God had surely created a vile thing when He created woman,” (de Pizan 113) shakes her badly.  She expresses sorrow and bitterness at this prevailing view.  In this moment of utter despair, de Pizan takes her surrogate to a fantasy where she meets feminine personifications of reason, justice, and rectitude: three qualities that the male writers claimed were lacking in women.  Reason addresses the authors who disparage women directly, attacking both their writings and their characters.  When Christine brings up a writer she feels has especially unpleasant things to say, Reason tells her that she “[shouldn’t] be surprised if Cecco d’Ascoli slandered the whole of womankind since he hated and despised them all. […] He too got what he deserved: thanks to his heretical views, he suffered a shameful death at the stake,” (de Pizan 125).  Again and again, Christine brings up a man who has written on the evils of women, and Reason tells her that the men are bitter or envious or foolish (de Pizan 123-124).  Throughout their dialogue, the three ladies give Christine the knowledge she needs to face the persecution in the works she reads and stand up for women.

           Both Clytaemnestra and Christine have the potential to be great feminist characters.  Clytaemnestra is a queen who protects her kingdom and helps it to prosper.  Even her murder of Agamemnon can be seen as justified—he killed their daughter, an act which is said to “violate all human law” (Agamemnon 177) every time it is mentioned.  She could be a champion, fighting against a society that views women as property, sometimes literally (as with Cassandra).  Instead, she surrenders to the stereotype of the scheming and evil woman, killing the war hero in his sleep and depending on Aegisthus to protect her.  Christine lives up to her potential.  While de Pizan shares Clytaemnestra’s anger at the way women are viewed and treated, she writes a dialogue that sets up her opponents’ arguments and then counters them. She writes of Amazons and warrior women who show the same courage and strength as men (de Pizan 128-134), and she appeals to the religious views of her land: that God “nurtured the idea of creating man and woman” (de Pizan 126) and made woman to be man’s “companion standing at his side, who he would love as if they were one flesh, and not his servant lying at his feet” (de Pizan 126).  De Pizan is justifiably angry at the treatment that women receive, but she channels that anger into her arguments.  Most importantly, she stands against the misogyny that she has encountered and refuses to surrender to it.  Clytaemnestra allows her anger at the world and at her husband to cloud her mind, and she is weakened by it.  Christine de Pizan takes her anger and uses it as a focus in her fight against the unfair world she lives in.

[hoursofreading]

“I Should Have Read That” Tag // tagged by @kxowledge

A book that a certain friend is always telling you to read: Americana by  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A book that’s been on your tbr forever and you still haven’t picked it up: deep work: rules for focused success in a distracted world by cal newport

A book in a series that you’ve started, but haven’t finished yet: does plato’s republic count? :) in all honesty, i don’t typically read books from series but i’m trying to get through discworld’s the truth

A classic you’ve always liked the sound of but never actually read: The Book of the City of Ladies or Le Livre de la Cité des Dames by Christine de Pizan

A popular book that it seems everyone but you has read: 12 rules for life by jordan peterson

A book that inspired a film/tv adaptation you really love, but you just haven’t read yet: discworld’s good omens

A book that you see all over tumblr/Instagram but haven’t picked up yet: mastery by robert greene

[margiesfrenchlitblog]

Five interesting French nonfiction Books

In Parise Of Love - Alain Badiou

Liberal and libertine reductions of love to instant pleasure and non-commitment bite the dust as Badiou invokes a supporting cast of thinkers from Plato to Lacan via Karl Marx to create a new narrative of romance, relationships and sex - one that does not fear love. (Good Reads)

In The Metro - Marc Auge

Tourists climb the Eiffel Tower to see Paris. Parisians know that to really see the city you must descend into the metro. In this revelatory book, Marc Auge takes readers below Paris in a work that is both an ethnography of the city and a personal narrative. Guiding us through history, memory, and physical space, Auge juxtaposes the romance of the metro with the reality of multiethnic urban France. (Goof Reads)

The Gods Will Have Blood - Anatole France

An idealistic young artist appointed as a magistrate during the French Revolution. Gamelin's ideals lead him to the most monstrous mass murder of his countrymen, and the links between Gamelin and his family, his mistress and the humanist Brotteaux are catastrophically severed. This book recreates the violence and devastation of the Terror with breathtaking power, and weaves into it a tale which grips, convinces and profoundly moves. (Good Reads)

Black Skin, White Masks - Frantz Fanon

Applies a historical critique on the complex ways in which identity, particularly Blackness, is constructed and produced. Fanon confronts complex formations of colonized psychic constructions of Blackness in the book. He applies psychoanalysis to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that black people experience. (Wikipedia)

The Book of the City Ladies - Christine de Pizan’s

Thirteenth century that addresses marriage and argues that women make men's lives miserable. Upon reading these words, Christine becomes upset and feels ashamed to be a woman: "This thought inspired such a great sense of disgust and sadness in me that I began to despise myself and the whole of my sex as an aberration in nature". (Wikipedia)

[jillmckenzie1]

Colorado Poet Series: Interview with Alyse Knorr

The local literary scene is, one must remember, a community.  (One you can be a part of, by the way, whether you’re a writer or reader!) In fact, after I interviewed the poet Elizabeth Robinson who connected me with fiction writer David Hicks, and it was David Hicks who recommended that I reach out to poet Alyse Knorr.

It was my pleasure to read two of Alyse Knorr’s poetry collections, Copper Mother and Mega-City Redux for the purpose of this interview. These collections of poetry and prose respectively are both delightfully dense and unusual explorations which perpetuate insightful cultural commentary within each of their respective narratives.

First, a little bit about Alyse:

Alyse Knorr is an assistant professor of English at Regis University and editor of Switchback Books. She is the author of the poetry collections Mega-City Redux (Green Mountains Review 2017), Copper Mother (Switchback Books 2016), and Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books 2013), as well as the non-fiction book Super Mario Bros. 3 (Boss Fight Books 2016) and the poetry chapbooks Epithalamia (Horse Less Press 2015) and Alternates (dancing girl press 2014). Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University, where she co-founded Gazing Grain Press.

Now, about Copper Mother (Switchback Books 2016):

“Through a startling mixture of forms and language, Copper Mother generates an unusual love story—of loving one’s world so tremendously that that world must be shared, at enormous risk and with unprecedented ingenuity and effort. The ‘Friends’ of Knorr’s universe bring their gentle curiosity to human heroics and frailties, and the humans—we humans—are redeemed by our eagerness to share our naked selves and by Jane, who bravely matches the terrors of mortality with a selfless faith in our capacity to love. Sincere even in its playful and fantastic moments, Knorr’s poetics emerges from a deep groove of mourning all that we have to lose and will certainly lose, every day and on the last day, perhaps most of all ‘our mothers, tired/and lovely and floral and gone.’ In that mourning, though, runs an illimitable current of open-hearted reverence that is the best of humanity and beyond its possession—that craving for contact ‘[t]his world wishes across/space’ to whomever might accept our greeting and the belief that we are already together with loved ones, those we’ve lost and those we haven’t yet met, in the slippery fullness of time.” – Elizabeth Savage, author of Idylliad

And finally, about Mega-City Redux (Green Mountains Review 2017):

In 1405, Christine de Pizan, the world’s first professional writer, published an allegorical work called The Book of the City of Ladies, in which she imagined constructing (with the help of her fairy godmothers Reason, Rectitude, and Justice) a walled city where women could live safe from sexism, misogyny, and gendered violence. Six hundred years later, we still need such a city. Mega-City Redux charts a road-trip search for this mythical city today, with the help of 21st-century feminist heroes Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena Warrior Princess, and Dana Scully from The X-Files. Mega-City Redux is essential architecture built from ‘sword, suit, stake, and pen’ – feminine, marvelous, and mega-tough.”

– Mel Nichols, author of Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon

  From here, we dialogue:

1. Your most recent projects, Mega-City Redux and Copper Mother inhabit unique worlds while following somewhat strange, utterly unpredictable narratives.  How did the seedling ideas for these works germinate into their final works? Can you describe the creative decision-making process which led to their unique content and form?

The idea for Copper Mother came from a Radiolab interview with Ann Druyan in which Ann describes creating the Voyager Golden Record with her late husband, Carl Sagan, in 1977. NASA sent the Record into deep space with the hopes that an extraterrestrial civilization might find it, and it contains images, sounds, and languages from Earth meant to introduce our species to aliens. I started reading more and more about the Record, and started wondering what might happen if aliens did find the Record and come to Earth to talk to us about it. Ann ended up a character in the book as “Jane,” and I imagined that the aliens might have a technology that would allow present-day Jane to converse with her 1977 past-self. I’ve always been a big fan of science fiction, so I had a blast getting to play with some classic sci-fi tropes (like time travel and a moment of “first contact”) in the book.

I wrote Mega-City Redux after reading Christine de Pizan’sThe Book of the City of Ladies, a 1405 allegory in which Christine imagines building a walled city—with the help of her three fairy godmothers Reason, Rectitude, and Justice—where women can live safe from sexism and misogyny. I also wrote the book in the wake of the 2014 Isla Vista shootings, when a man shot and killed several women out of purely misogynistic hate. This violent tragedy made abundantly clear to me that we still need Christine’s City of Ladies today just as much as we did 600 years ago, so I imagined going on a road trip to find the City with my three personal fairy godmothers—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena Warrior Princess, and Dana Scully.

With both of these projects, once I had the premise and the characters in mind, I just wrote as many poems as I could to try and see what would happen. I love to work in the novel-in-verse form because I get to build a world and create characters and then put them into interesting situations just to see what they’ll do. I love when my characters surprise me and when the plot takes a turn I didn’t see coming!

2. How did you arrive at the decision to source the unnamed female narrator’s fearless female companions Dana Scully, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Xena Warrior Princess, as companions? How are their popular personas purposed in your work, and what effect does their pre-established backstories have on your work? Why did you choose these characters specifically?

I’m a big TV buff, and TV has always been my outlet for self-exploration and my pathway to self-understanding. When I was a young girl, I couldn’t picture myself as the damsel in distress or the love interest in the media I consumed, but I could imagine myself into the role of hero in the form of a Ninja Turtle or Batman. I only felt ready to come out as a lesbian in graduate school after watching all six seasons of The L Word. And so, I really do consider Buffy, Xena, and Dana to be my feminist heroes or role models—they made a big impact on me when I first watched their shows, and they continue to mean a lot to me today.

At the time I wrote Mega-City Redux, I had also recently read Susan Douglas’s book Enlightened Sexism, which is all about the pop culture feminist TV renaissance of the 1990s-2000s, when shows like Buffy and Xena debuted with their fiercely feminist and also really campy and fun content. Even though Mega-City Redux is about very serious social issues, I wanted to have fun with it, and I loved the idea of spending time on a road trip with these three extremely different women. I loved thinking about how they might interact—how they might annoy each other in the car and how they might care for the other. I really appreciate that they’re all such different types of heroes, which I think is important for feminist dialogue. Dana is my Reason figure—logical and intellectual. Buffy is my Rectitude figure—she tries to set things right, which is an inherently vulnerable act to take. Xena is my Justice figure—she wrestles with the thin line between justice and revenge.

What’s great about these three characters is that they’re already so complex and have so much backstory—Dana Scully is the voice of reason to her partner Fox Mulder, and she’s a very logical, left-brained doctor—but she’s also a person of firm religious faith. This kind of complexity made it easy to work with my characters’ backstories and stay true to them without caricaturing them. But my main goal wasn’t to write about the shows or the characters but rather to take them and plop them into my narrative and go on this quest with them.

3. Mega-City Redux cleverly, humorously combines feminist content with pop culture imparting an accessible, modernized spin. What reader responses have surprised or impressed you?  What role do feminist works such as your own play in the current political climate?

I’m always surprised to see just how much these pop culture figures mean to folks. I’ve had readers talk to me about how they first realized they were gay because of Dana or Xena, and I had a reader recently show me a photo of she and her wife dressed up as Xena and Gabrielle (Xena’s beloved) for Halloween. I teach a class on superheroes at Regis, and I love talking with my students about why pop culture matters. TV is often lightyears ahead of the mainstream public discourse, so it can advance social justice movements in powerful ways—shows like Glee and Grey’s Anatomy won a lot of hearts and minds over to the cause of LGBTQIA rights. But TV also acts—just like the Golden Record—as a kind of time capsule snapshot of our world and our culture at this specific moment in time. I love this inherent tension, and I love the space that pop culture creates for “serious play.”

When I read works like Frank O’Hara’s poem “Lana Turner Has Collapsed” or Gary Coleman’s book of superhero poems Missing You, Metropolis, I’m always reminded of the power of writing about our celebrity or our fictional pop culture heroes. These are our modern-day “saints” and icons—our role models and outlets and thought experiments. They can act as a kind of common language through which to discuss the issues of our time, and because they exist in another, imaginative realm, they’re also inherently full of possibility and potential. These, to me, are the ingredients of powerful dialogue.

4. While the majority of science fiction works treat alien arrival as synonymous with the apocalypse, Copper Mother approaches alien arrival with a tone of friendly, casual curiosity. What reason lies behind this significant, divergent decision?

I wrote Copper Mother while I was living in Alaska, and while we were there, my wife and I received many visitors—family and friends who had always wanted to go to Alaska and finally bought their plane tickets after we moved there. So we spent a lot of our time being tour guides—showing our visitors things and places that felt totally ordinary to us but that totally blew their minds (glaciers! moose! bald eagles!). I think for this reason, I imagined a real tenderness between the humans and Our Friends. They often have awkward but always well-meaning, sweet exchanges. The humans sincerely want to be good hosts and Our Friends genuinely want to be polite visitors. I’ve always been interested in what happens when two very different cultures or groups meet and interact, and on what gets included or neglected from the tour or the introductory conversations.

I’m also very invested in the sincerity of the Golden Record project itself—it’s our only truly “species-wide” project—the only artifact we have that attempts to represent us as a unified planet rather than a fractioned collection of different groups. There’s an inherent optimism in the idea of the Record itself—a beautiful hopefulness that I wanted to capture in my book. To launch the Record into space is to believe that someone will find it who wishes us well and wants to connect with us—and that’s the possibility I wanted to envision in my book, not the terrifying (and cliche!) apocalyptic one. I’m a pretty uncynical person by nature, so this was easy for me to imagine.

5. Throughout the work, the aliens, later joined by Then-Jane, communicate through sound effects. How did you go about developing these dialogues?

The Golden Record includes a tremendous amount of sound, including an address by Jimmy Carter, spoken greetings in 55 different languages, a wealth of music (including Beethoven, Chuck Berry, Navajo night chants, and mariachi), and a series of “sounds from Earth” (wind, rain, crickets, wolves howling, cars).

During my research, I learned that many astrobiologists believe that if extraterrestrials ever actually hear the Record, they probably won’t be able to distinguish between the different sounds included—their auditory organs and understanding of language may be so different from ours that they may not know the difference between the music, language, and natural sounds on the Record. For that reason, I wanted Our Friends (and Then-Jane, since she’s a product of the Record) to speak with a mixture of all the types of sounds included on the Record. All of the dialogue they speak comes from actual Record contents, whether it’s a thunderstorm or a hyena laughing or a trumpet wail. I like the way this allows me to play with the definition of “language”—which is something the Record does, too, by including whale song not in the natural sounds portion of the content, but in the languages section!

6. And finally, info on how to purchase both works!

The best way to purchase is to go out to my website, www.alyseknorr.com, and click the licks on the books to go to the publisher’s page.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/colorado-poet-series-interview-with-alyse-knorr/

[xavieralexander1980]

A Guideline to Reading My Work and Generally Blowhard Post About Poets, Activism, and Performance Art

(Written for Facebook were I post usually)

(Warning, I was drinking coffee and just started writing to clarify some things. It has turned out to be an EXTREMELY LONG post. You might want to visit later if you care and have the time):

--I stared into the sun one time for three or four hours. For a long while afterwards there was a floating blue and red dot or floater in my field of vision, but my eyes adjusted. It's kind of a miracle that I can see at all. I completely destroyed my macula. That is why you often see mistakes in punctuation. I think it is a comma when it is a period. I was delusional when I stared at the sun.

--I started writing poetry at 15 in 1995. In 2008, I branched out to poetry films in grad school, which you can see those films on my page, Caruso Films. That is a long time of writing only poetry.

--After reading David Foster Wallace in 2011, I branched out into nonfiction, memoir, and experimental essays. Some of those essays have been published in journals, such as "Sugar Mule" and "And/Or". However, it has only been 5 years of truly writing prose, so if you think my prose is weird or rough or shaky, it is because I am an amateur experimental essayist.

--In poetry and experimental writing, there has to be an entry point into the author's style. Every day if you are following any of this, I am experimenting. One thing I notice is that I try to be as clear as a fucking idiot who is grasping for words in my prose. I don't want you to think I am being condescending at all. Or that everything I write is somehow profound. Because it isn't usually: Being profound or not, after a while, I have learned, in writing is all the same. In learning the craft of writing, writers say that you have to "earn" interesting and profound points and ideas. There is no shortcut in earning something, as you know. It is all doing and work hours.

--Writers usually don't show the world their work hours. What you see is the finished, polished product. In a sense, I don't see my writing as "nonfiction" in any conventional sense. Since this is Facebook, and it is like town hall square in olden days, I have always intended it to be performance art. I am a great admirer of performance art, such as spoken word, magic, jesters, busking, impromptu comedy, jazz, or even ballet. I see poetry as my strength, prose my weakness. At least, that is my opinion. I don't want to impose that, though. I notice people actually prefer my little blogs and essays. I also notice people prefer brevity, but here's the thing about that: this is all published, and can be perused by anyone on earth later. I don't hide my profile or any status updates.

--As an activist, which much of my writing is political, and I would argue Facebook, as a public forum, is all political and social dynamic, I have always enjoyed independent and maverick art and statements, such as Neil Young or Lou Reed or Emerson or Thoreau or just about any poet in World Literature. While poets have come in groups like the Beats or Romantics or Dadaists (the first punk rock artists), within those groups, there have always been individual and political differences between poets, such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, or Byron and Wordsworth, or Marcel DuChamp and Tristan Tzara. I try to allude to poets and literature I admire, btw. Here is a compendium: (I sort of went hogwild. Skip for time sake.) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Welsh maverick and alcoholic prodigy, Dylan Thomas, my first love. To know more about his style and who he is, see Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne, both Protestant ministers.

2. I prefer World Literature. a. Russian poets: Brodsky, Mayakovsky, Mendlestam, Voznesensky, and Pushkin (Shakespeare of Russia). b. Germanic, Polish, Eastern European and Jewish: Goethe (Shakespeare of Germanic Literature), Paul Celan, Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska, Edmond Jabes are good starting points. c. Western European poets come in schools: French Symbolists (who invented free verse and influenced TS Eliot), Surrealists, Dadaists and Futurists (who opened poetry to all the arts), and British poets you know. d. Although not technically World Lit, American Southern Poets are not discussed near enough: John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren are like the Willie Nelsons and Johnny Cashes of the South.

3. American Schools and Poets I would recommend: John Cage (John Lennon and Yoko Ono), David Antin (who didn't write but spoke all of his poetry and recorded it), Language School, and Black Mountain School.

4. For Queer poets: Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, Jack Spicer, are the big guys. Lesbian poets: you should know are Sappho and Adrienne Rich. Just talk to your gay and lesbian friends about poets they like.

5. For Black and African lit, "Negritude" school, see amiri baraka and Aime Cesaire, who are, to me, very important for their poetic styles. Check out your local Spoken Word show. There are a million things going on.

6. I don't even know where to begin with Asian Literature. Haiku poet Basho and Korean poet Yi Sang are two big poets. In China, poetry was the literature of the scholar class. Prose wasn't invented until 1900 and it was considered pulp. I would refer you to my Professor Walter K. Lew for all Asian and Buddhist Literature. Lao Tzu is phenomenal, in so many ways. From religion to spirituality to poetry, it is all one and the same.

7. Spanish poets I like are Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda (His sonnets are the best love poems), Brazilian Poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and to know these poets, check out Federico Garcia Lorca from Spain. It doesn't hurt to know the first novelist Cervantes, who birthed the modern novel, Don Quixote. I like the 1940s translation by Samuel Putnam. Critic (Big Blowhard of English Lit) Harold Bloom considered Cervantes the only equal to Shakespeare, who both were writing at the same time (and didn't know about each other).

8. Middle Eastern and Persian poets: Rumi, Ghalib (who wrote ghazals, one of my favorite forms). I can't say I am too familiar with Contemporary Middle Eastern poets, but you come across them in literary journals. See the Koran, as well.

9. For Feminist poets, see Anne Sexton, HD, Gertrude Stein, Diane Wakowski, and Adrienne Rich, again, to name a few. Although not a poet, see Renaissance Italian writer, Christine de Pizan, and her fictional story, "The Book of the City of Ladies", which birthed Feminist Literature.

10. The Bible, Torah, Tao Te Ching, Koran, Gnostic Judaic and Christian Books, Bhagavad Gita , Vedas and Upanishads, and Homer, (Most Buddhist Literature was orally passed down but all we have is prose versions. Except certain Chinese Buddhist Schools: See Haiku and Renga forms): all of which is technically poetry. And that is a different entry point or lens into those important works. I think in this day of organized religion it is very important to remember that spiritual texts and myths were written as poetry, and translated into all languages. People have noted some of my religious views, but I do so from poetry.

(I don't know why I just gave you a compendium of poets and authors. I got excited and took a trip down memory lane. I prefer World Literature translations. I just have always gravitated toward them and learning about the world through their poets.)

In case you don't want to go through all of World Literature, here are anthologies I would recommend: 1. Norton Anthologies, of course. 2. Poems For the Millennium by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (Most of the poets I mentioned can be found in the first two volumes and it is a great starting off point). -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--Personally, I have always enjoyed anthologies and literary journals over individual poets. I enjoy poems over poets, generally speaking. The best guide to literary journals is New Pages.com. Everything from experimental writing to traditional writing can be found there. The big thing now or in the last few years is "hybrid' writing, which is basically not identifying the style of writing and blending all the styles. So just to be obvious, my Facebook page could be quote hybrid. The other big thing is a more "personal style". To paraphrase Frank O Hara, why write a poem when you can just call your friend on the telephone?

--My father has told me a million times that he doesn't get my poetry. And my father is more intelligent than I am. He is a doctor. I really don't have an answer or explanation. I read poetry like I read an article in the Washington Post. I read poetry on the toilet. I try not to "comprehend" it. Sure there are different ways to analyze it, and there are scholars who do that all day long. I have done that and can do that. But the difference is kinda like hearing "Kind of Blue" and studying it. I just appreciate the album, I don't know Jazz Theory. Most of the time, I just feel or listen to poetry. School and scholarship is the time and place to scan, do close readings, and theorize poetry, in my opinion. I am not a scholar. I am not a critic. I am an artist. I create. Most of theory and criticism stifles me. And I would recommend both scholarship and theory for any artist, but I wouldn't bog myself too much, not until you are interested in it. There are people who have been doing that all their life. And so much more power to them.

--Last point: I have Bipolar Disorder. I have coped with this illness all my life. Mental illness is a debilitating illness in the sense of functioning in conventional society. You know someone who has a mental illness, beside me. And not much is truly understood about mental illness. David Foster Wallace hung himself due to chronic depression, and he is arguably the greatest nonfiction writer in the last twenty years. Dostoevsky suffered from fits of seizures in which he had profound revelations. Hemingway shot himself due to alcoholism and some underlying mental illness. Sylvia Plath committed suicide due to a mental illness and I believe it was un-diagnosed bipolar disorder (I could be wrong). Emily Dickinson suffered from agoraphobia and stayed home for most of her life. While I am not saying I am like those geniuses, and it is a misnomer to think that everyone with a mental illness is an artist or genius, I bring it up because artists I admire had mental illnesses. The point is to show that sometimes society is wrong about things, as you know. Blacks, immigrants, queer folk, women, veterans, homeless people, poor people, and virtually every marginalized group I can think of society has been wrong about. And many of these marginalized people are starting to come out of the closets and say, guess what, society doesn't quite get me. And they are doing so in art and argument.

"In conclusion," LOL, these are guidelines and entry points for readers. For the most part, I believe people don't care actually. But neither do I most of the time. I also have been drinking coffee this morning and I get rolling with thoughts, which explains the length of this post. LOL.