As my rerouted bus this morning reminds me, the Lollapalooza invasion of Chicago begins today—promising to fill downtown with not only the usual sweaty masses of music fans nostalgic for 90s grunge and teens not old enough to remember when Chris Cornell had long, greasy hair, but also with strange and curious gaggles of Lady Gaga imitators all seeking to recreate for themselves aspects of the performer-cum-spectacle’s uniquely outrageous style. Being more of a 1980s Madonna girl myself, I’ve been surprised to discover that Lady Gaga’s influence has gone beyond the stage and the catwalk and penetrated the most unlikely genre—poetry. Lady Gaga has in fact inspired a journal, Gaga Stigmata, which through writings and art endeavors to “take seriously the brazenly unserious shock pop phenomenon and fame monster known as Lady Gaga.” In Gaga Stigmata one will find, for example, a review that examines Swedish poet Aase Berg’s collection With Deer in relationship to Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video. The journal is edited by Meghan Vicks and Kate Durbin. Durbin is a poet and the author of the aptly named The Ravenous Audience, which in poems that are extremely visceral, sexual, and grotesque, probes the glamour of film stars like Clara Bow and Marilyn Monroe and deconstructs the very artifice that makes such glamour and stardom possible. And so, it seems only right for a poem from The Ravenous Audience in honor of this weekend and all those stylized Gagas:

“Doll Dress”

adorn

//

deck (out)                      dress (up)

//

embellish,
ornament, enhance, array

swathe,

drape, petrify, grace

grace

//

we’ll adorn the body with tiny lights and ropes of pine

we’ll put fresh dressings on each wound