Alberto Rios teaches a Magical Realism class at ASU where the capstone of the class is to make a magical realist object. An example one of my classmates made was a bread noose. Tasty. Mine was a lame "Hairbrush," with hair where the brush should be. (For more on magical realism, Tito built a website with neat facts: http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/magicalrealism/ ) What I’ve realized recently is that many objects hold a magical realist text within their name. I was thinking about the stiletto shoe, which compares the traditional, thin steel heel of the shoe with a thin knife of the same name. It made me think how many objects, particularly clothing objects, bear names that keep them only a step away from being absurd: the Peter Pan collar, the bell sleeve, the pencil skirt. The interesting thing about these pieces of clothing is that they get their name from a strong resemblance to the absurd objects their name implies—these are absurd objects realized and normalized in the...
Feminism, poetry, poetics.