Anne Carson Plainwater: Essays and Poetry

A provocative anthology of poetry and prose by the Canadian intellectual includes selections from "Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings," "Short Talks," "Canicula di Anna," "The Life of Towns," and "The Anthropology of Water." Reprint.
Plainwater brings together five selections from Anne Carson's growing body of highly praised work.
'Breathtaking. . . . A work of gorgeous innovation and a staunch hypnotic intelligence.' -- The Village Voice The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group's reading and discussion of the work of Anne Carson, whom Michael Ondaatje praised as 'the most exciting poet writing in English today.' Carson is a winner of the prestigious MacArthur fellowship, and has been the recipient of much admiration in the literary world. She is credited with the invention of an entirely new kind of poetry, fusing free verse with prose passages, using pastiche to startling effect, combining searing emotion with austere intellect. Interspersing her own words with quotes and references to sources that range from classical Greek literature, St. Augustine, the Bible, and the Tao to Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Carson constructs an astonishing art that is able to arouse, like nothing else in recent years, new emotional and intellectual energies in her readers. As one reviewer commented, 'There's good reason that Carson's reputation has soared to a level equal to that of the half-dozen most admired contemporary American poets. . . . She has . . . a vast habitat, to every bit of which she brings powerful perception and a freshness as startling as a loud knock at the door' (Calvin Bedient, 'Celebrating Imperfection,' a review of Men in the Off Hours . The New York Times Book Review , 5/14/00).
The poetry and prose collected in Plainwater are a testament to the extraordinary imagination of Anne Carson, a writer described by Michael Ondaatje as "the most exciting poet writing in English today." Succinct and astonishingly beautiful, these pieces stretch the boundaries of language and literary form, while juxtaposing classical and modern traditions.Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers miniature lectures on topics as varied as orchids and Ovid. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy. She constructs verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns, and takes us on a pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive and intimate anthropology of water. Blending the rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry with the discursive nature of the essay, the writings inPlainwater dazzle us with their invention and enlighten us with their erudition.