Poetry. Opera. American Studies. Women's Studies. Foreword by Brenda Coultas. "The legendary Calamity Jane was plucked up by Doris Day and tarted out by Jane Russell in the movies, butched down by Robyn Weigert on Deadwood, and tackled with varying degrees of spunk and grit by dozens of other actors, biographers and braggarts. She likely aggrandized aspects of her own adventures in an almost assuredly ghost-written memoir, Life and Times of Calamity Jane by Herself , which was published as a souvenir pamphlet for admirers ...
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Poetry. Opera. American Studies. Women's Studies. Foreword by Brenda Coultas. "The legendary Calamity Jane was plucked up by Doris Day and tarted out by Jane Russell in the movies, butched down by Robyn Weigert on Deadwood, and tackled with varying degrees of spunk and grit by dozens of other actors, biographers and braggarts. She likely aggrandized aspects of her own adventures in an almost assuredly ghost-written memoir, Life and Times of Calamity Jane by Herself , which was published as a souvenir pamphlet for admirers to take away from her dime museum and wild west show appearances. Whether or not she was all she has been said to be--military hero, eagle- eyed sharpshooter, expert equestrian, boozehound-lover of Bill Hickok and other wild men, and women--she was extraordinary, every bit as much for her own stubborn ordinariness as for her irregular feats and tall tales. Thomas Devaney's CALAMITY JANE is epic poetry recast for the drama of daily life, a libretto as vivid on the page as it is anticipated in performance. Here, Martha Jane Canary is a horse-crazy youngster who loses her parents too early and grows up too fast, a big sister-cum-head-of-household who makes a living at mostly menial labor, washing dishes and patching holes, keeping her younger siblings warm and keeping herself alive, for a while, at least, for a good half-century. Isn't that enough? Living life doesn't make anyone a hero, but for some, for Jane, it may be heroic simply to survive."--Cynthia Chris "Poetry, when it strikes deep, is always calamitous. Thomas Devaney's marvelous and moving libretto on this transgressive, gender-disrupting legend, the True Jane of the Wild West, conjures up echoes of other classic Janes--Yeats' Crazy Jane and Baraka's Crow Jane--both figures of radical, plainspoken testifying. This captivating book-lengt
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