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afternoonlight's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
short talks on hedonism is my fave
percystjoan's review
5.0
another delightful collection from anne carson! i started men in the off hours recently but actually found it a bit too esoteric for me to get through, but this one is right in that sweet spot that i really enjoyed in beauty of the husband - and has the added benefit of being a quick read. really great stuff
short talk on the anatomy lesson of dr. deyman
a winter so cold that, walking on the breestraat and you passed from sun to shadow you could feel the difference run down your skull like water. it was the hunger winter of 1656 when black jan took up with a whore named elsje otte and for a time they prospered. but one icy january day black jan was observed robbing a cloth merchant's house. he ran, fell, knifed a man and was hanged on the twenty-seventh of january. how he fared then is no doubt known to you: the cold weather permitted dr. deyman to turn the true eye of medicine on black jan for three days. one wonders if elsje ever saw rembrandt's painting, which shows her love thief in violent frontal foreshortening, so that his pure soles seem almost to touch the chopped open cerebrum. cut and cut deep to find the source of the problem, dr. deyman is saying as he parts the brain to either side like hair. sadness comes groping out of it.
short talk on hedonism
beauty makes me hopeless. i don't care why anymore i just want to get away. when i look at the city of paris i long to wrap my legs around it. when i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, i no longer gather what falls.
short talk on the king and his courage
he arose laden with doubt as to how he should begin. he looked back at the bed where the grindstone lay. he looked out at the world, the most famous experimental prison of its time. beyond the torture stakes he could see, nothing. yet he could see.
short talk on sleep stones
camille claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. come visit me, she says. remember i am living here with madwomen, days are long. she did not smoke or stroll. she refused to sculpt. although they gave her sleep stones - marble and granite and porphyry - she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night. night was when her hands grew, huger and huger until in the photograph they are like two parts of someone else loaded onto her knees.
short talk on the anatomy lesson of dr. deyman
a winter so cold that, walking on the breestraat and you passed from sun to shadow you could feel the difference run down your skull like water. it was the hunger winter of 1656 when black jan took up with a whore named elsje otte and for a time they prospered. but one icy january day black jan was observed robbing a cloth merchant's house. he ran, fell, knifed a man and was hanged on the twenty-seventh of january. how he fared then is no doubt known to you: the cold weather permitted dr. deyman to turn the true eye of medicine on black jan for three days. one wonders if elsje ever saw rembrandt's painting, which shows her love thief in violent frontal foreshortening, so that his pure soles seem almost to touch the chopped open cerebrum. cut and cut deep to find the source of the problem, dr. deyman is saying as he parts the brain to either side like hair. sadness comes groping out of it.
short talk on hedonism
beauty makes me hopeless. i don't care why anymore i just want to get away. when i look at the city of paris i long to wrap my legs around it. when i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, i no longer gather what falls.
short talk on the king and his courage
he arose laden with doubt as to how he should begin. he looked back at the bed where the grindstone lay. he looked out at the world, the most famous experimental prison of its time. beyond the torture stakes he could see, nothing. yet he could see.
short talk on sleep stones
camille claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. come visit me, she says. remember i am living here with madwomen, days are long. she did not smoke or stroll. she refused to sculpt. although they gave her sleep stones - marble and granite and porphyry - she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night. night was when her hands grew, huger and huger until in the photograph they are like two parts of someone else loaded onto her knees.
asippel89's review
4.0
Although many of the poems felt over my head, they all used language in a way that was refreshing and illuminating. I look forward to coming back to my favorite poems and reliving their beauty.