Plainwater (Vintage Contemporaries): Essays and Poetry

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Eastham, Ben; Testard, Jacques, eds. (2017). The White Review Anthology. London: The White Review. ISBN 978-0995743717.

Robert Currie: But you do think of the idea in every setting. If you’re swimming, you’re thinking about the idea. If you’re cooking, you’re thinking about the idea. You might not be in the idea, but you’re thinking about it. And you’re kind of working through it. November 2012). "A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways". London Review of Books. 34 (21): 42–43 . Retrieved 9 September 2020. Robert Currie: And I said John Cage. And this leads to the next thing I wanted to say, which is: When you have somebody who’s interested in Homer, and somebody who’s interested in John Cage, how do you make that work together?May 2017). "Saturday Night as an Adult". The New Yorker. Vol.93, no.11. p.50 . Retrieved 30 December 2018. April 1992). "How Not to Read a Poem: Unmixing Simonides from Protagoras". Classical Philology. The University of Chicago Press. 87 (2): 110–30. doi: 10.1086/367294. JSTOR 269522. S2CID 162377103.

March 2005). "On Discovering at Dinner that Adam Zagajewski and I Share a Birthday". London Review of Books. 27 (7): 8 . Retrieved 9 September 2020. The Life of Towns," Part 4, is similar to "Short Talks" except it is written as short poems. The beyond-curious thing about these guys is that every line in every poem starts with a capital letter and ends with a period--even when it's not a sentence. Exhibit B ("A" being busy): Good Dog I, II, III". In Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (ed.). Jürgen Partenheimer: Das Archiv – The Archive. Berlin: Distanz Verlag. pp.185–194. ISBN 978-3-95476-046-6. Ah well. Nobody’s body of work is entirely faultless, you know? And I’d like to emphasize that this solid four-star, in places five-star, work is the weakest Carson book I’ve read thus far. That speaks volumes about how good she is. The rest of this work takes Carson to new territory, which I think we all expect by now. Parts two and four, respectively an essay suite entitled “Small Talks” and a poem cycle called “The Life of Towns,” function as iridescent bursts of consciousness, both gorgeously written, both sharp in their insights. T Summer 1988). "Chez l'Oxymoron". Grand Street. Ben Sonnenberg. 7 (4): 168–74. doi: 10.2307/25007148. JSTOR 25007148.July 2015). "A Rehearsal for Life". The Times Literary Supplement: 15 . Retrieved 9 September 2020.

The “Essays on the Road to Compostela” describe a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, undertaken over the course of a month of walking. The speaker, a woman who sees herself as largely genderless, travels with a man she identifies only as “My Cid” and to whom she has no sexual attraction. The pair discuss deep questions such as loneliness and its avoidance, the importance of faith, and what defines a pilgrim. Together, they walk to Santiago de Compostela. But then, the speaker says, Just as no mountain ends at the top, so no pilgrim stops in Santiago. The city and the saint buried there are a point of thought, but the road goes on. It goes west: Finisterre.

Winter 1991). "Alphabetic Edge". The Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild Newsletter. 9 (4): 3–6. Ziegler, Alan, ed. (2014). Short: An International Anthology of Five Centuries of Short-short Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms. New York: Persea Books. ISBN 9780892554324. Sara Elkamel: But when it comes to collaboration, there isn’t a clear workspace, medium or tool; there isn’t the notebook or the studio—the work often happens in-between places, especially when, as is the case for you two, you’re already living together. So what does the willingness to do the work look like? Throughout all of these sections, Carson explores her fraught relationship with her father. Yep. He's another one of those strict, man-of-few-words types who bears a daughter-of-many-words and has trouble showing his love. Plus, the aesthetics are just wonderful. Carson calls in these choruses about pilgrims throughout “Kinds of Water” and sprinkles in lines from classic blues and jazz singers (Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, and Etta James are among the greats inattendance) all over “Just for a Thrill.” I find they have a particularly powerful double-effect in the latter, creating a sense of physicality and temporality while also providing a framework for the events themselves. Each asks a question of the scene, and few are quite as straightforward as they appear. Meanwhile, the pilgrim bits, which close off many of “Kinds of Water’s” fragments, provide all sorts of shading to what we’ve read, in many cases adding an extra layer or two to the fragment.

June 2014). "The Albertine Workout". London Review of Books. 36 (11): 34–35 . Retrieved 9 September 2020. The poetry and prose collected in Plainwater are a testament to the extraordinary imagination of Anne Carson, a writer described by Michael Ondaatje as “the most exciting poet writing in English today.” Succinct and astonishingly beautiful, these pieces stretch the boundaries of language and literary form, while juxtaposing classical and modern traditions. Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers miniature lectures on topics as varied as orchids and Ovid. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy. She constructs verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns, and takes us on a pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive and intimate anthropology of water. Blending the rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry with the discursive nature of the essay, the writings in Plainwater dazzle us with their invention and enlighten us with their erudition. Plainwater: Essays and Poetry by Anne Carson – eBook Details January–February 2001). "Longing, a Visual Primer". Art on Paper. Art in Print Review. 5 (3): 58–60. JSTOR 24558137. February 2002). "Guillermo's Sigh Symphony". London Review of Books. 24 (3): 14 . Retrieved 8 September 2020.The Gender of Sound". In Guttman, Freda (ed.). Cassandra: Voices from the Inside. Montreal: Orboro. pp.62–81. ISBN 9782922042092. Summer 1999). "The Idea of a University (after John Henry Newman)". The Threepenny Review (78): 6–8. JSTOR 4384833. Much of “Anthropology” is written in a diaristic sequence, a form attuned to the speaker’s movement. Each entry in “Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela” opens with a date (8 th of July, for example), a place (Sahagún, El Burgo…), and an epigraph from an earlier literary pilgrim (Mitsune, Basho, Shiren…). Simultaneously designating one place in time and referencing another point in another human’s journey, Carson twists her speaker’s path with that of previous travelers as interested as she is in a “sardine” or a “rising moon.”