Nem monstro, nem fera, um protótipo: retalhos de um corpo na poesia de Elise Cowen

Abstract

The Beat Generation, an embryonic American counterculturein the 1950s was, above all, a literary movement, and also a homosocial one. With names like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, it has influenced the following generations to deny the status quo and to write in contrast to the traditionalcanon. On the other hand, the works of the majority of women that circulated in this group, and even their memories, has been neglected by their own peers. Here, I intend to briefly demonstrate how aesthetic choices in a single poem by the American poet Elise Cowen (1933-1962), who moved around the Beat circle and traveled with it, not only function as metaphors about her body and voice as a writer, but also distant themselves from the known Beat aesthetic, although its rhythm and thematics –mainly the sense of rebellion and questioning –remain in each verse. I Took the Skins of Corpses, the longest poem in her only surviving notebook, outreaches the canon revisionism, making use of classic figures such as the monster created by Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, and the ballad meter practiced by Emily Dickinson. The verses construct some kind of a new poetic body, a prototype of a specific voice in women's authorship. Undergoing the largest number of revisions, taking into consideration the amount of attention she spent on writing those verses, it is believed to be the most important poem in her notebook, full of drafts and annotations. Anchoring on the reflections by Adrienne Rich, Alicia Ostriker and Betsy Erkilla among others, the aim is to develop theidea of a voice's creation, of sewing poet to writing. I Took the Skins of Corpses is introduced as a limit between creator and creation, bringing into light the authorship of a woman before a literary text, using the body as metaphor.