Scan barcode
A review by xterminal
Glass, Irony and God by Guy Davenport, Anne Carson
1.0
Anne Carson, Glass, Irony, and God (New Directions, 1995)
Every review of Anne Carson's Glass, Irony, and God that I've come across since I read it myself has mentioned the book's first poem, “The Glass Essay,” and called it, in one form or another, the book's strongest work. (Some of them do this by mentioning only this piece, so I admit to some inference on my part there.) And I will add my voice to that chorus; “The Glass Essay” is the piece in this book that makes it worth your time. I didn't like it nearly as much as a number of other reviewers did, but it's interesting and holds the attention, if there are parts of it that don't really come off as poetry.
The book goes downhill from there, with each successive poem getting less poetic (and less interesting), until it lands at the bottom of the hole with the final piece, an essay (which at least makes no attempt to be a poem) called “The Gender of Sound”. I can praise it in one way-- it's one of the very few essays of its stripe that actually uses the word “gender” correctly, rather than as a substitute for the word “sex”. (You'd think I wouldn't have to point this out when the book is written by a classics professor, but I've seen so many professionals-- including professors-- misuse the word “gender” that it surprises me to see it used correctly no matter who's doing the using.) Once one actually dives into the essay, however, is starts off ludicrous and gets ridiculous from there, including an assertion that Hemingway was scared of Gertrude Stein because she was, of all things, a meat-eater. One would think Hemingway, hunter that he was, would be far more scared of vegetarians.
One Amazon reviewer calls the book “[c]ertainly better than the journeys she has made into poetry exclusively recently.” Which tells me to stay well away from those, at least. If you approach this as a book of essays, perhaps it will work for you. I had always heard it referred to as a book of poetry, and it misses that mark as widely as any book of poetry I've ever read. *
Every review of Anne Carson's Glass, Irony, and God that I've come across since I read it myself has mentioned the book's first poem, “The Glass Essay,” and called it, in one form or another, the book's strongest work. (Some of them do this by mentioning only this piece, so I admit to some inference on my part there.) And I will add my voice to that chorus; “The Glass Essay” is the piece in this book that makes it worth your time. I didn't like it nearly as much as a number of other reviewers did, but it's interesting and holds the attention, if there are parts of it that don't really come off as poetry.
The book goes downhill from there, with each successive poem getting less poetic (and less interesting), until it lands at the bottom of the hole with the final piece, an essay (which at least makes no attempt to be a poem) called “The Gender of Sound”. I can praise it in one way-- it's one of the very few essays of its stripe that actually uses the word “gender” correctly, rather than as a substitute for the word “sex”. (You'd think I wouldn't have to point this out when the book is written by a classics professor, but I've seen so many professionals-- including professors-- misuse the word “gender” that it surprises me to see it used correctly no matter who's doing the using.) Once one actually dives into the essay, however, is starts off ludicrous and gets ridiculous from there, including an assertion that Hemingway was scared of Gertrude Stein because she was, of all things, a meat-eater. One would think Hemingway, hunter that he was, would be far more scared of vegetarians.
One Amazon reviewer calls the book “[c]ertainly better than the journeys she has made into poetry exclusively recently.” Which tells me to stay well away from those, at least. If you approach this as a book of essays, perhaps it will work for you. I had always heard it referred to as a book of poetry, and it misses that mark as widely as any book of poetry I've ever read. *