Anne Carson Reading (5/1)

Anne Carson got on stage, and she fiddled with the microphone, and I thought, "Oh Christ, this is going to be an awkward reading." I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't. In fact, it was far from it. Carson was fantastic. Not only was her reading voice wonderfully soft and dry and deliberate, but her poetry itself, as far as I could tell given my limited experience with poetry, was incredible, as well.

I particularly enjoyed her 59-paragraph poem. It put me into this trance where I forgot where I was and all I was concerned with in that moment was the author of this book I had never even read before. She walked us through an idea that is very abstract and complex - the relationship between an author and their work - and broke it down in an interesting, thoughtful way, so that I'm sure everybody in the audience completely understood what she was trying to convey and, whether they've read his book or not, even sympathized with Proust. I think Carson's poetry is not something that you simply read – I think it's more something that happens to you. It is an experience, and a hefty one, at that. On an almost entirely unrelated note: 7 years to read a book? Devotion, thy name is Anne Carson.

As much as I felt as though I connected with the poetry tonight (or the poetry connected with me, maybe), I'm not sure I would go to Green and check out an Anne Carson collection right now. I think her poems are something that need a lot of time and thought, and, right now in my life, I have perhaps too much thought and undoubtedly too little time (thanks, Stanford!) I'll have to wait for my thought:time ratio to balance out, and then I'll sit down and look at her collections. But, with that said, I did very much enjoy her personality and her reading. If there's one person I wouldn't mind sitting down and having a conversation with, it's the woman who concluded her poem on the death of mothers with a cheery, "Welp, that's all that."