Gender Trouble Couplets: Volume 1 (Paperback or Softback)

Judith Butler’s GENDER TROUBLE: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity radically claimed that the sexed body is a fallacy, discursively constructed by the performance of gender. A.W. Strouse has undertaken to rewrite Butler’s classic tome into an octosyllabic poem. Inspired by the rhyming encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, Strouse transforms each of Butler’s sentences into punchy medieval couplets. This performative repetition of Chapter 1 of Butler’s now classic treatise on gender, identity, and sexuality, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,” deconstructs Butler’s deconstruction. Relishing in the campiness of rhyme and meter—in the bodily pleasures of form—Strouse’s GENDER TROUBLE COUPLETS, Volume 1 is an imitation for which there is no original. Butler's GENDER TROUBLE, perhaps, was poetry all along.

"In the tradition of the Revolutionary Cookbook (“Eggs Benedict Arnold”), teaching Structuralism through Hipster vs. Amish beards (“Is that beard ironic?”), and literary hostess gifts (“Lady Macbeth’s Soap”), comes this brilliant rhymed couplet version of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. Rarely has a poet applied his gifts to a more deserving subject. Strouse is the the Jeff Koons of queer theory, the Kim Kardashian of différance, the Lisa Frank of same-sex. In the grand tradition of rhymed pedagogical commentary — think Chaucer teaching Litel Louis how to use the Astrolabe — this funny and useful book will be an instant bestseller, a perfect gift for the nerd and hipster in your life, and the best Valentine cadeau for your secret queer crush whom you want but cannot quite name." ~ Anna M. Klosowska, author of QUEER LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES (Palgrave, 2005)

A.W. STROUSE teaches medieval literature at The New School, and has published a wide variety of creative works, including MY GAY MIDDLE AGES (punctum, 2015) and with Patty Barth, TRANSFER QUEEN (punctum, 2018).