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A review by casparb
Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
More Anne and this is a collection I ride a fine line with because I feel some of her best ideas are in here and they are, as she delivers, phenomenal. Particular love for Artaud (which contains a pastiche of Derrida's Glas ???? Hello ????) Akhmatova Hokusai Emily Dickinson and especially Tolstoy who I do believe more poets in English should pay attention to as an individual as a biography so thanks anne for being all casually groundbreaking as per.
There's a sense in this one, more than I've encountered before from her, of the seminar. At times one feels she's in 'teaching mode' and I appreciate that! I'm not sure where I sit with the prose poem generally so I do bow in deference when I struggle to find a reliable sense of these As Part of the collection as a whole - which does relate to my broader feeling here that can in a way be summed up as I'm Not Sure What This Collection Goes Toward in that I feel Glass and God or Beauty are kind of miracles of poetic focus insofar as being disparate but drawing together into a polymathic whole. Probably Decreation is the best example of that I've encountered. Perhaps I'm just asking if it all hangs together of necessity?
Ho hum a lovely piece anyway and I'm glad I took the time for it. AC and dirt she mentions in the intro to her Antigone I seem to remember so, not to sound a broken record, it's curious to me she never seems to mention Kristeva when it does seem that she's the obvious source of that work. Interested in finding more on that
There's a sense in this one, more than I've encountered before from her, of the seminar. At times one feels she's in 'teaching mode' and I appreciate that! I'm not sure where I sit with the prose poem generally so I do bow in deference when I struggle to find a reliable sense of these As Part of the collection as a whole - which does relate to my broader feeling here that can in a way be summed up as I'm Not Sure What This Collection Goes Toward in that I feel Glass and God or Beauty are kind of miracles of poetic focus insofar as being disparate but drawing together into a polymathic whole. Probably Decreation is the best example of that I've encountered. Perhaps I'm just asking if it all hangs together of necessity?
Ho hum a lovely piece anyway and I'm glad I took the time for it. AC and dirt she mentions in the intro to her Antigone I seem to remember so, not to sound a broken record, it's curious to me she never seems to mention Kristeva when it does seem that she's the obvious source of that work. Interested in finding more on that