Anne Carson Archive
Shifting Perspective in Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red
Carson’s novel is driven by unlatching being: her protagonist’s narration progresses from the self-absorption of childhood through adolescence and into the comparative wisdom of young adulthood. Carson shows this journey primarily through changes in the way that the outside world, and those who live in it, are observed.
Hybridity in Color
Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson, and Marie NDiaye destabilize categories like genre and color as a way of moving forward with exploring the disturbances found within personhood.
Sappho’s Tweets: A New Kind of Fragment
What does it mean for an ancient poet and her translator—both women—to be taking up this kind of space in our Twitter timelines?
Imagining the Anthropocene: Anne Carson’s “The Anthropology of Water”
Along the course of a rugged pilgrimage, Carson’s defined formal structure enables the logical leaps that keep the speaker in a constant state of new encounter. As her mind’s constellated meanderings undercut the journey’s unceasing forward motion, “The Anthropology of Water” erodes assumptions of linear progress.
What comes through the fence: reading Paul Celan after the US election
There are so many traumas coming to the center of our political life now, and what I am attempting to say, through the hundred breakdowns of speech, is that there are places where language is undone. The horror of it is always there, lives in the breath and the
Poetry as Dialogue: Some Thoughts on Chapbooks
There's never been a better time for poetry chapbooks, with hundreds of presses publishing excellent, innovative examples each year. This proliferation invites a closer look into the chapbook's history as a medium for more direct engagement and dialogue between writers and readers.
Squad Books
Look, I’m not trying to be Internetty. But at the end of a year I’ve spent thinking a lot about friendship, I don’t want my last post to be another family tree. Instead, I want to write about books that are my friends. I want to write about the
The Art of Time(lessness) in Reading
Pacing, suspense, and flashbacks are just a few of the topics covered in The Art of Time in Fiction, Joan Silber’s insightful reference for writers who wish to better understand the technique of arranging time to narrative effect. Yet I am just as interested in the art of
The Narrowed Divide: Of Stylists, Shape-Shifters, and Multiple Aesthetics
Our collective understanding of how a story, poem, or essay should operate remains in constant flux; every sentence is a new description of language, every piece of writing, a new commentary on art. In this sense, any shared definition of storytelling is best left unresolved, unless we are