Anne Carson and Floating Gender

Photo source: Hammer Museum

Anne Carson is a Gemini. The sign of Gemini is represented by The Twins and ruled by the planet Mercury. Mercury is the heart of the word mercurial, a term used to describe people who are erratic and unpredictable. Gemini is also an air sign, and air is the element that rules thought patterns and communication. It is said that people born under the sign of Gemini are natural writers and teachers, albeit a touch difficult to follow.

Anne Carson is a poet, writer, multi-linguist, professor of the classics, a feminist and a genius.

In a Paris Review interview with Will Aitken (no date listed), Carson reflects on gender:

“I guess I’ve never felt entirely female, but then probably lots of people don’t. But I think that at different times in my life I located myself in different places on the gender spectrum, and for many years, throughout my thirties which is when I did that pilgrimage, I didn’t have any connection to the female gender. I wouldn’t say I exactly felt like a man, but when you’re talking about yourself you only have these two options. There’s no word for the “floating” gender in which we would all like to rest. The neuter comes up in the unbearable poem, the neuter gender, but that doesn’t really capture it because you don’t feel neuter, you feel just wrong. Wrong vis-à-vis the gender you’re supposed to be in, wrong vis-à-vis the other one, and so what are you?”

Artemis. Source: Lactating Fountains of Italy


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s