Clarinda

Clarinda may refer to:

As a given name:

Places:

Other uses:

See also

Clarinda, Iowa

Clarinda is a city in and the county seat of Page County, Iowa, United States. The population was 5,572 in the 2010 census, a decline from the 5,690 population in the 2000 census.

History

Clarinda was founded in 1851, and incorporated on December 8, 1866. Many stories are told of such notables as Jesse James frequently passing through.

The town is named for Clarinda Buck, who according to legend carried water to the surveyors while Page County was first being surveyed.

The best known national firm in Clarinda for many decades was Berry's Seed Company, a mail order farm seed distribution business founded in 1885 at Clarinda by A. A. Berry. Berry's Seed Company diversified into retail stores in the 1950s, but the stores were sold off over the following decade, and today the company, known as Berry's Garden Center, operates from its one remaining retail outlet in Danville, Illinois.

In 1943 during World War II, an internment camp designed for 3,000 prisoners of war with sixty barracks and a 150-bed hospital was built in Clarinda. German prisoners were the first to arrive at Camp Clarinda, followed in 1945 by Italian and Japanese POWs.

Clarinda (poet)

Clarinda was the pen name used by an anonymous Peruvian poet, generally assumed to be a woman, who wrote in the early 17th Century. The only work attributed to her is the long poem Discourse in Praise of Poetry (Discurso en loor de la poesía), which was printed in Seville in 1608. She is one of very few female, Spanish-speaking colonial-period poets whose work has not been lost. Thus, she is often read in partnership with Mexico's Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and fellow Peruvian "Amarilis", whose identity is also uncertain.

Identity and early life

Because she wrote under a pen name, and because no documentation definitively affirms her existence, Clarinda's identity is at best enigmatic. Her gender is itself a source of debate, though literary scholars like Georgina Sabat de Rivers and Raquel Chang-Rodríguez have isolated in Clarinda's poetry what they believe is a distinctly female voice.

Clarinda was born in the latter half of the 16th Century and was likely a member of the criollo caste, therefore of pure Spanish ancestry, born in the Spanish colonies. Her writing, which depends heavily on Greek and Biblical allusions, indicates that she was well read and educated. With few exceptions, women under Spanish colonial rule were not encouraged to write, and women who did write typically learned to do so on their own and knowing their work would not find acceptance from the men who dominated the literary tradition. Fear of rejection or persecution may have been what prompted Clarinda to adopt a pseudonym.