VillainElle

by Lynn Crosbie

VillainElle, like Miss Pamela's Mercy, is haunted by the figures of popular culture - Jack the Ripper, Betty and Veronica, Dracula. These are poems of the mouth: tasting and speaking, kissing to wound and kissing to heal.

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Lynn Crosbie is a Canadian poet and novelist. She teaches at the University of Toronto.

She received her Ph.D in English from the University of Toronto, writing her thesis on the work of the American poet Anne Sexton.

Crosbie has lectured on and written about visual art at the AGO, the Power Plant, and OCAD University (where she taught for six years.) She is an award-winning journalist and regular contributor to Fashion magazine and Hazlitt. She has had columns in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, Flare and Eye magazine.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to the publisher, VillainElle "is haunted by the figures of popular culture". Indeed, VillainElle is populated by figures of popular culture (such as Jack the Ripper, Betty & Veronica, Dracula, etc...) but it seems to me that VillainElle is haunted not by these icons specifically but by the cultural cimate of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The eras from which they emerged loom over VillainElle, imposing upon Crosbie's era (1990s) in the same way that cultural theorists have perceived the past imposing upon the present in any decade. Crosbie's appropriation of these icons is therefore an act of subversion, by which she intends to foster a new era by rejecting or embracing these icons of past eras...
- Her line about "tearing another pink iris, orange freesia, / from the Chelsea wallpaper" is undoubtedly a reference to the Chelsea Hotel (" All About Eve ", pg. 11), a cultural landmark and host to countless actors, musician, poets, novelists, etc...
- The same poem shares its name, "All About Eve", with the Academy Award winning film from the 1950s.
- The poem "I Am Curious (Yellow)" evokes not only the 1960s Swedish film that shares its name, but the cinematic climate of the 1960s that was dominated by the emergence of foreign films.
- Her Jack the Ripper is not the same Jack the Ripper of Whitechapel, but Jack the Ripper as re-imagined by pulp novelists and Tales from the Crypt comics.
- Too many to list. And I'm sure there are countless examples I'm not aware of...

each time I see her, in Harper's Bazaar or Vogue,
I tear another pink iris, orange freesia,
from the Chelsea wallpaper. and I stand
on the black metal balcony and sing, Madame
Butterfly.[...]
- All About Eve (pg. 11)


sometimes, when I am cleaning
the broken glass and splinters,
the gale of his temper. he
looks remorseful, he says"
I can't seem the help myself.
he would be reading in the basement -
Tales from the Crypt - and his father
would find him and beat him with
a leather belt, and bur the
horror comics in the backyard.
[...]
- Poems for Jack the Ripper, 3. Remorse (pg. 33)

I detect, in Coadie's writing, a love of puns and wordplay.
- In " All About Eve ", the poet refers to the titular "Eve" thus: "my heroine, she kissed the veins of my / wrists and ankles, she combed me with a diamond / syringe." (pg. 12) "Eve", it seems, is the poet's (or, the narrator's) "heroine" and her "heroin". This in the same poem that evokes the Chelsea Hotel, the Chelsea Hotel where notorious heroin addict Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death. The same poem that quotes lyrics from The Velvet Underground's Heroin: "I don't know just where I'm going / but I'm going to try for the kingdom if I can"
- Veronica's "cruel mouth" (" Betty and Veronica ", pg. 22) and Eliot's "cruel month".
- The intentional confusion of Ancient Troy with Troy, Michigan. Repeated references to someone named "Tony" may be a continuation of this intentional confusion, "Tony resembling "Tory". Or, Tony may be a real person, he may be the Tony (sans surname) to whom the book is dedicated, or Tony Burgess, to whom the author extends a special thanks "for their support, advice and encouragement" (among others).
- Again, too many to list...

[...]
my heroine, she kissed the veins of my
wrists and ankles, she combed me with a diamond
syringe. and the opium bled in flowers from
the glass, each perfect carat blooming in
my heart.[...]
- All About Eve (pg. 12)


[...]
I pin my prayers to a photograph of her,
she is burning money and her arms are
spread open, she id bleaches by the
light of the sun. and I pray, she will
come to me tonight and bless my body
with her hot breath and cruel mouth.
I am lost inside of her, as her spirit
becomes flesh, generous and sweet.
I hear her walking in the grass, circling
the garden below. she calls to me,
to join her and she tells me how she
hates me. his impression, soulful,
cryptic, rejects me too but I
reach for her, still, for her
faithless heart and we fall to the
earth, struggling, and wild with
desire.
- Betty and Veronica (22)