ROBERTSON, Lisa
Proverbs of a She-Dandy

SHE WILL CONSIDER THE CONCEPT OF MENOPAUSE AND ITS PATHOLOGICAL CODE AS ONE OF THE COVERT PRODUCTS OF MODERNITY.

Wow! Thanks Erin @ Cutt Press for republishing this while we are waiting for Riverwork : ) One of Lisa Robertson’s most stimulating and seminal works, Proverbs of a She-Dandy takes as its cue the coincidence that both the words “dandy” and “menopause” appeared in the French language in 1821, the year Charles Baudelaire was born. Further observing the unexpected common points between the dandy and the old woman in Baudelaire’s writings, in relation to their social roles and unconventional urban mobility, Robertson, in a poem composed as a suite of proverbs, or manifesto-like statements, “activate[s] the figure of menopause as the new dandiacal body.”

Proverbs is completed by Robertson’s own translation of two works by Baudelaire, the poem “Hags” and the prose poem “Widows” – followed by a note on these two texts. The preface is great as well. 

First published by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, in 2018.

Published by Cutt Press, 2026
Chapbooks / Poetry