Anne Carson Readings

I first encountered Anne Carson’s work in Eavan Boland’s Women Poets class last year.  We read “The Glass Essay,” the heftiest work we read all quarter.  I remember avoiding it any way I could, but recommendations from others in class got the better of me.  I was absolutely enthralled by it in my first reading.  I loved Emily Bronte the “wacher”, I was disturbed and excited by Glass’s appropriation of Bronte’s life and its stagnancy.  She told us that Anne Carson would hopefully be visiting the following year, and I’ve been waiting eagerly since.

She was incredibly lovely in her reading at Cemex, and I was near tears throughout, sometimes because of her tremendous wit and sometimes because of her crushing insight on matters of grief and suffering.  Her voice was incredible.  I’m almost invariably struck by readings from poets.  The text always bends under their inflections.  Her deadpan style could become so disarming under the weight of her words.  She described a woman asking the person at her bedside to help her pluck the hairs that had started to form under her chin.  I did not weep but I wanted to.  I regret it now.  I can’t return to that place when I simply read that work.

There’s something also to be said for her appearance.  I hadn’t ever thought about how she might look.  It seems ridiculous to note, but she was beautiful I just wanted her to keep reading, to keep talking. 

Boland’s Poetry and Poetics class met for her Colloquium as well, over in Bechtel.  This put a damper on my experience with Carson.  The additional reading included a pseudo performance piece from her husband, who moved disjointedly around the room with a piece of string, the other end of which was attached somewhere almost of reach beside a window.  I was annoyed and frustrated, and remember none of her words.  The class she taught also participated in a piece, and another involved multiple voices layered in a chorus of mostly repeated phrases.  It seemed somehow pitiful, and I remember being angry that she had wasted her talent.  It was only thirty minutes of time with a free lunch after, I don’t really know what I was on about that day.