POET

Anne Carson (1950 - )

BIOGRAPHY

"In the small world of people who keep up with contemporary poetry," wrote Daphne Merkin in a New York Times Book Review piece, "Anne Carson, a Canadian professor of classics, has been cutting a large swath, inciting both envy and admiration." The publishing trajectory taken by this poet, added Merkin, "has been something other versifiers can only marvel at," for reasons including the fact that Carson's writing was, according to Merkin, "unclassifiable, even by today's motley, genre-bending standards. Was she writing poetry? Prose? Prose poems? Fiction? Nonfiction? Did even her publishers know for sure?"

Whatever the genre, Canadian resident Carson has in the past been recognized as an American poet by dint of her many years living and working in the United States, though by early 2000 she had relocated back to Canada to teach the classics at Montreal's McGill University. Her publishing career began with Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, which also established Carson's style of patterning her writings after classical Greek literature. Such works as Plainwater: Essays and Poetry and Glass, Irony, and God helped seal the author's reputation for erudite imagery. But perhaps of the most widely received examples of her particular specialty is Carson's Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse.

Autobiography of Red takes its cue from the legend of Hercules—Herakles in the traditional spelling from the tale by Steischoros—whose tenth labor was to slay the red-winged monster Geryon. Recasting the story in modern time, Carson makes some significant choices. "In Steischoros, Herakles kills Geryon and steals his red cattle," explained Adam Kirsch in New Republic. "In Carson, Herakles breaks Geryon's heart and steals his innocence." The two characters are introduced as teenagers, Geryon (still red and sporting wings) a sheltered, sensitive high-school boy and Herakles a sexy, rebellious roughneck. The two begin an affair that ends as "Herakles cannot match the soul-tearing totality of Geryon's adoration," as Chicago Review contributor Mark Halliday described it. Years later the two characters meet in Buenos Aires where Geryon falls into a destructive ménage a trois with Herakles and his new boyfriend, Ankash. "The drama of desire and jealousy produces charged moments," stated Halliday, "but the ending is anticlimactic; the three visit a volcano in Peru, and Geryon has yet another opportunity to ponder the infinity of lava-like passion in finite hearts, but by this time he has already realized that his love for Herakles has burned out."

Autobiography of Red drew strong reaction in several periodicals. Halliday felt that the book was "willfully whimsical and delightedly peculiar." Perhaps it is too peculiar for New Criterion's William Logan, who said that "what supports the rather preposterous premise is Carson's exact eye for the travails of childhood." To Logan, the author is guilty of having "ambitions . . . larger than her material, and her attempt to link this dysfunctional childhood to notions of 'redness' or volcanoes is comically strained." Kirsch wondered if Carson had indeed produced the verse promised in the book's subtitle. "The writing is clearly prose," he maintained, "laid out in alternating long and short lines, with no strictness of measure or rhythm; the division between a long line and a short one is typographical only, or at best syntactic."

Other reviewers found more to praise in Autobiography of Red. Nation critic Bruce Hainley pronounced Carson "a philosopher of heartbreak" and said her epic-length poem makes for "a brilliant book about desire, the ancient Greek poet Steischoros, volcanoes and the joyful brutalities of seeing and blindness [a reference to Steischoros, who according to legend was blinded by Helen of Troy for writing critically of her; she restored the poet's sight when he penned a recanting statement]. To Ann K. Van Buren of Library Journal, Carson was to be applauded for this "daring merger of erudition and experimental form." And Nicole Cooley summed up her impression in a Review of Contemporary Fiction entry by calling the book "an extremely moving story of love and loss and the powers and failures of language."

Carson's fable went on to earn nods from prize committees, though Autobiography of Red "did not start out a winner," according to Time International reporter Katherine Govier. "Published to scant notice . . . it was mainly talked about by writers here and there. Talk became buzz when the book won Quebec's QSPELL poetry award." From there the volume went on to earn a National Book Critics Circle nomination, making the Canadian-born Carson one of the first two non-Americans to appear on the Circle's short list.

Since Autobiography of Red, Carson has published Men in the Off Hours which, unlike its epic-style predecessor, is a book of short poems reminiscent of Carson's earlier volumes. It incorporates "epitaphs, love poems, verse-essays, commemorative prose, 'shooting scripts' for purported TV dramas and poems addressed to paintings," noted Publishers Weekly writer Stephen Burt. In 2001 Carson published The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in Twenty-nine Tangoes, another poetry collection whose subject is "the waywardness of lust and the disaffection of the heart as seen through a marital breakup," as Daphne Merkin wrote. A Publishers Weekly writer recognized the Greek influence, saying that this work is "Sophocles' Electra, translated by Anne Carson." For Review of Contemporary Fiction, Anne Foltz remarked that Carson's depiction of a middle-aged woman faced with a no-longer-loving husband contains "short blinding passages [that] evocatively reconstruct the grace, beauty, truth and passion of the tango's most brilliant practitioners." Carson was awarded the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 2000, winning an award of $500,000 over five years.

"Albert Einstein credited his discovery of fundamental laws of the universe to his ability to ask the simple question," wrote Steven Marks in a Dictionary of Literary Biography piece. "Much the same can be said of Anne Carson, who in her poetry and essays asks questions about gender, desire, anger, self, and language that allow the reader to see the world afresh."

Speaking to Stephen Burt, Carson admitted that at heart she considers herself a visual, not verbal, artist: "I didn't write very much at all until I guess my twenties because I drew. I just drew pictures, and sometimes wrote on them when I was young, but mostly I was interested in drawing. I never did think of myself as a writer!" Even after several acclaimed volumes, "I don't know that I do yet. I know that I have to make things. And it's a convenient form we have in our culture, the book, in which you can make stuff, but it's becoming less and less satisfying. And I've never felt that it exhausts any idea I've had."

CAREER

Poet and essayist. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, former instructor; Emory University, Atlanta, GA, former instructor; McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, John MacNaughton Professor of Classics, 2000—.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1986.
Short Talks, Brick Books (London, Ontario, Canada), 1992.
Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.
Glass, Irony, and God, New Directions (New York, NY), 1995.
Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.
Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1999.
Men in the Off Hours, Knopf (New York, NY), 2000.
The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in Twenty-nine Tangoes (poetry), Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.
(As translator) Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to anthologies, including The Best of Grand Street, edited by Ben Sonnenberg, Random House (New York, NY), 1989; The Best American Poetry of 1990, edited by Jorie Graham, Ticknor & Fields (Boston, MA), 1990; and The Journey Prize Anthology, edited by Douglas Glover, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994. Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including New Muses, Chicago Review, and Threepenny Review.

FURTHER READINGS

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 193: American Poets since World War II, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998, pp. 46-53.
Foster, Nelson, and Jack Shoemaker, The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader, Ecco Press (Hopewell, NJ), 1996.

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Philology, fall, 1990, Barbara Gold, review of Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, p. 400.
American Poetry Review, March-April, 1995, Carole Maso, "An Essay," pp. 26-31.
Antioch Review, spring, 1997, Gail Wronsky, review of Glass, Irony, and God, p. 247.
Booklist, July, 1995, Janet St. John, review of Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, p. 1853; November, 1, 1995, St. John, review of Glass, Irony, and God, p. 450; April, 1998, Ray Olson, review of Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, p. 1294; November 1, 1995, p. 450; January, 1, 1999, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 781; March 1, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Men in the Off Hours, p. 190; February 1, 2001, Seaman, review of The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in Twenty-nine Tangoes, p. 1035.
Boston Phoenix, December 23, 1995.
Canadian Forum, September, 1999, Daphne Marlatt, "A Poignant Critique in a Playful Mixing in of Genres," p. 41.
Canadian Literature, spring, 1995, Alexander Forbes, review of Short Talks, p. 177; summer-autumn, 1999, Jed Rascula, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 187; autumn, 2000, Ian Rae, "Dazzling Hybrids," p. 17; summer, 2001, Rae, "Flights of Verse," p. 185.
Chicago Review, spring, 1999, Mark Halliday, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 121; winter, 2000, Danielle Allen, review of Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan, p. 162.
Classical and Modern Literature, winter, 2000, Robert Lamberton, review of Economy of the Unlost, p. 81.
Georgia Review, fall, 1993, Judith Kitchen, review of Short Talks, p. 578; fall, 2000, Jeffrey Shotts, review of Men in the Off Hours, p. 583.
Iowa Review, summer, 1997, John D'Agata, p. 1; spring, 1999, Sharon Wahl, "Erotic Suffering: Autobiography of Red and Other Anthologies," p. 180.
Journal of Modern Literature, summer, 2000, W. H. New, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 565.
Library Journal, February 15, 1992, p. 156; November 15, 1986, Thomas Robinson, review of Eros the Bittersweet, p. 97; July, 1995, Daniel Guillory, review of Plainwater, p. 79; May 1 1998, Ann K. van Buren, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 88; April 1, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 95; September 1, 1999, David Kirby, review of Economy of the Unlost, p. 190; February 15, 2000, van Buren, review of Men in the Off Hours, p. 168; February 1, 2001, Fred Muratori, review of The Beauty of the Husband, p. 99.
Maclean's, June 18, 2001, John Bemrose, "Poetry in Motion," p. 50.
Midwest Quarterly, winter, 1997, Richard Holinger, review of Plainwater, p. 235.
Modernism/Modernity, April, 2000, Stanley Corngold, review of Economy of the Unlost, p. 1190.
Nation, June 1, 1998, Bruce Hainley, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 32.
New Criterion, June, 1999, William Logan, "Vanity Fair," p. 60; June, 2000, Logan, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 63.
New Republic, May 18, 1998, Adam Kirsch, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 37.
New York Times Book Review, September 30, 2001, Daphne Merkin, "Last Tango," p. 12; October 7, 2001, review of The Beauty of the Husband; February 10, 2002, Scott Veale, review of The Beauty of the Husband.
Poetry, August, 1996, Sandra Gilbert, reviews of Plainwater and Glass, Irony, and God, p. 281; December, 1998, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 181; December, 2000, "News Notes," p. 230.
Poets and Writers, March-April, 2001, Mary Cannon, "Anne Carson: Beauty Prefers an Edge," p. 26.
Publishers Weekly, May 29, 1995, review of Plainwater, p. 77; September 25, 1995, review of Glass, Irony, and God, p. 49; March 30, 1998, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 70; July 26, 1999, "Verbal Transactions," p. 87; February 7, 2000, review of Men in the Off Hours, p. 70; April 3, 2000, Stephen Burt, "Poetry without Borders," pp. 56-57; December 18, 2000, review of The Beauty of the Husband, p. 73; April 16, 2001, "Poetry Notes," p. 62.
Raritan, fall, 1996, Adam Phillips, review of Plainwater and Glass, Irony, and God, p. 112.
Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 1995, Brian Evenson, review of Plainwater, p. 253; fall, 1998, Nicole Cooley, review of Autobiography of Red, p. 233; summer, 2001, Anne Foltz, review of The Beauty of the Husband, p. 172.
Time International, February 22, 1999, Katherine Govier, "Not So Simply Red," p. 57; April 10, 2000, Julie Bruck, "Timelines: Anne Carson Ponders the Big Issues of Life, Death, and History," p. 98.
Times Literary Supplement, May 25, 2001, Josephine Palmer, review of Men in the Off Hours, p. 26.
University of Toronto Quarterly, winter, 1999, Marnie Parsons, "Poetry," p. 42.
Women's Review of Books, November, 1996, Elisabeth Frost, review of Glass, Irony, and God, p. 24; October, 2001, Priscilla Long, "Literate Obsessions," p. 14.
Yale Review, December 18, 2000, review of The Beauty of the Husband, p. 73.