Hektor becomes the star of a show about the Trojan War who must reenact the great battles for a demanding director:įor Troy a source of food, a cause for exultation in prayer, Her “TV Men” poems imagine mythic heroes and canonical authors as the stars of their own tv shows. Much of Carson’s work might be described as fan-fiction of the classics (though I suppose that is also true of much of Western literature). I do not claim to understand it, exactly, but I love it beyond reason, and I urge you, Toasties, to pursue it. It’s surprising, uncanny work that is utterly distinct in voice and vision. Her poetry books sometimes have essays in them her books of classical scholarship sometimes have lyric passages that rival anything filed under “poetry.” One of her books is an accordion-folded reproduction of a scrapbook she made as an elegy to her brother it contains, among other things, a facsimile of a handwritten letter, torn and rearranged into a collage, alongside a translation of Catullus 101.

She works most with the parts of life that make no sense and do not help you, only somehow she transforms them into poetry that both fulfills and deranges what you think poems should do. What I really mean is that she works on the edges of what’s acceptable, in every book and genre in which she participates.

By that I don’t mean that she writes graphically about sex (though she does) or that she makes art that is unseemly and difficult (though she does that too). Next up: Gwendolyn Brooks.Īnne Carson is a poet of perversities. Laura Passin will be doing a series of pieces examining the great female poets we have been fortunate enough to share the earth with.

Anne carson glass