Description
Poetry. LGBT Studies. Translation. "In OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, ECHOIC, Chris Tysh newly translates Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, compressing Jean Genet's disturbing 1943 novel into cuttingly charged verse. In the blue hours of the Parisian underworld, pimps, drag queens, and butchers in bloody aprons are joined by Divine, Mignon Dainty-Feet, and the young assassin Our Lady, three saintly figures in a forbidden realm of the senses. Tysh cuts OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, ECHOIC into a ghostly song that traces the path from prose to lyric where Divine switches gender and names "as if passing under a scarlet awning." Suturing sexual otherness to an aching of gendered expectations, Tysh's cadences embrace postmodernism's emblematic penchant for all manner of appropriation, and recycling finds a radical iteration in the fashion of fairies, queens, and stool pigeons.
"This volume of verse, played over by a flickering ghostly flame, is perhaps the book that Genet meant to write..."—John Tranter
Author Bio
Chris Tysh was born and raised in Paris, and studied American literature at the Sorbonne. She was naturalized as a citizen of the United States on July 4th, 1998. Her critical study, Allen Ginsberg, was published in Paris by Editions Seghers in the series "Poètes d'Aujourd'hui." She teaches writing and women's studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her books include HOTEL DES ARCHIVES: A TRILOGY (Station Hill Press at Barrytown, 2018), OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, ECHOIC (Les Figues Press, 2013), MOLLOY: THE FLIP SIDE (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), NIGHT SCALES: A FABLE FOR KLARA K (United Artists Books, 2010), CLEAVAGE (Roof Books, 2004), CONTINUITY GIRL (United Artists Books, 2000), IN THE NAME (Past Tents Press, 1994), and COAT OF ARMS (Station Hill Press of Barrytown, 1992). Her Motor City drama, car men, a play in d, was staged at the Detroit Institute of Arts under the direction of Carla Harryman in 1996. She is a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts fellow.
Author City: DETROIT, MI USA