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Norma Jean Baker of Troy, a performance piece mashing up Marilyn Monroe and Euripides. Now she makes time for literary play, her Troy âcrouched on the plain like James Baldwin / with its eyelids drifting down and drifting upâ, but her writing remains as fierce as ever. At this #MeToo moment protesting against the objectification of women, her Trojan women are drawn as literally animal, the spoils of war, a âmob of dogs and cows you see downstage [â¦] leftover femalesâ.
Carsonâs purposeful play bypasses nostalgia for the kind of traditional forms on display in another creative revisioning. Gillian Clarkeâs new translation of
Float) and artist Bruno (
The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson) embodies feminine narratives with wry lyricism. Brunoâs black-and-white illustrations literalize poetic metaphorsâTroy is âjust a big old hotel/ luxurious, damp and full of spiesâ; Athene is a âpair of overalls, carrying an owl mask in one handââto whimsical effect. Yet the cleverness and agility of this graphic work amplify its tragedies: the exiting Greek army takes Trojan women as slaves, and Hekabe is anthropomorphized as an abject sled dog âof filth and wrathâ who has witnessed the deaths of most of her children. Even the infamous Helen, a shape-shifter who appears as a silver fox and a mirror, must defend her life to her husband, the king Menelaos, after Hekabe wants her âsentenced to death out of her own mouthâ for her apparent complicity in the downfall of Troy. Herald Talthybius, a hulking raven, outlines the prize for perfect feminine obedience: âBe ni
When Emily Dickinson died, nearly two thousand poems were found sewn in booklets called fascicles, written out as fair copies. These manuscripts were done; there were no mistakes or corrections. But also, many poems included a little plus-sign at the end of a word, or line, or whole stanza, and at the bottom of the page, she offered another word, or line, or stanza to read in its place.
Similarly, many of us have our own variations on Emily Dickinson. Just over one year ago (“Since then ‘tis Centuries and yet/Feels shorter than the Day”), the first season of Dickinson dropped. Dickinson’s creator and showrunner, Alena Smith, offered us her Emily Dickinson funny, sexy, angry, desperate, secure, beloved, loving and while it joined other recent adaptations of Dickinson on film, this variant also felt new.