2nd Literary Event - Anne Carson

I went and saw Anne Carson, twice. The first time was better and I remember on my way home telling myself I was going to try and write something like her, or at least about her. Unfortunately at the time I was unaware that I would actually have to do that.

            She spoke to a packed audience in the Knight Building. After a part funny part painful introduction by a man who stole a few of her punch lines, Anne was applauded onto the stage. She was beautiful and carried her beauty lightly. Standing in front of the microphone she asked if we could all hear her. Some at the back responded that they could not. She tried to raise the microphone closer to her mouth but after a few attempted adjustments she declared that she would become clearer as she fatigued and hunched throughout the reading.

            Anne Carson used words in a way I had not heard them used. She was immensely playful and in her calm and detached voice she began to read several translations from a Greek (or Latin) poet, his name sounded old, I can’t remember. Within these short, ten second, pieces she managed to make the audience laugh and a moment later silenced us with some chilling turn of phrase. It felt like something inside of me dropped when at one point she concluded a poem with the words ‘and if not – winter.’

            Jokingly she introduced her next piece, an analysis of Proust, with the admission that she numbered the paragraphs so that we could at least know we were marching towards some sort of ending. I laughed at this, but as the piece carried on, having not read any Proust, I gradually lost interest despite my initial affection for her. Towards the end of this piece it became clear that having studied Albertine wasn’t really necessary to earn something. As the seemingly unrelated details that Anne had spent 50 paragraphs listing reached their conclusion the details of Proust’s fiction collided with his biographical reality in a series of connections that again produced a sort of aching prettiness.

            As she began her final piece I became overwhelmed by the pattern on the wall behind her that was producing a painful optical illusion and made it impossible to focus. This was fortunate because from that point on I listened to her words with my head bowed and my eyes closed. The story was that of a man at his dying mother’s bedside as she asked him to remove the hairs on her chin that she was too frail to rid herself of but to self-conscious to ignore. In this brutally vivid scene my eyes stung and I was happy to have an excuse to hide them.

            And then she was finished. Without warning she thanked us, picked up her papers, walked to the edge of the stage and sat down. No room for questions. Only the ones she had silently posed to anybody in the auditorium who was planning on becoming a writer.