Glass, Irony and God [Paperback]

Anne Carson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 1995

Anne Carson's poetry—characterized by various reviewers as "short talks," "essays," or "verse narratives"—combines the confessional and the critical in a voice all her own.

Known as a remarkable classicist, Anne Carson weaves contemporary and ancient poetic strands with stunning style in Glass, Irony and God. This collection includes: "The Glass Essay," a powerful poem about the end of a love affair, told in the context of Carson's reading of the Brontë sisters; "Book of Isaiah," a poem evoking the deeply primitive feel of ancient Judaism; and "The Fall of Rome," about her trip to "find" Rome and her struggle to overcome feelings of a terrible alienation there.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fusing confession, narrative and classicism, Carson's poetry witnesses the collision of heart and mind with breathtaking vitality. In five long poems and a final essay (the provocative "The Gender of Sound"), her often droll tone and limber use of poetic form mediate a deeply philosophical undercurrent. The nine-part narrative poem, "The Glass Essay," delivers a truth-telling mosaic of diverse subject-matter?including the speaker's departed lover, a visit to her mother, The Collected Works of Emily Bronte, sexual despair and loneliness and visions termed "Nudes." Twenty wry, swift takes on "The Truth About God" include God's Christ Theory and The God Coup; "T.V. Men" wittily casts Sappho and Antonin Artaud as television personas, and explores the medium with ever-shifting refrains such as "TV is made of light, like shame." The 70 brief sections comprising "The Fall of Rome: A Traveller's Guide" deliver a round-robin meditation on strangers, dread, holiness, and mastery; "Book of Isaiah" retells the prophet's struggles in jarring language that reads at once futuristic and supremely ancient. Like a miner's lamp, Carson's nuanced voice illuminates often-unexplored interior spaces.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bringing a classical education and a philosophic quest to challenge tradition, Carson seamlessly blends these traits in her poetry and prose. This collection of mostly long poems demonstrates Carson's daring and dramatic approach to writing, especially in "The Glass Essay," where she intertwines repercussions of a failed relationship, encounters and attempts to understand her parents, the theme (recurring almost symphonically) of Emily Bronte's glass-box life and intrigue with darkness and death, and Carson's fear and attraction to Bronte's vision. "The Truth about God" brilliantly characterizes biblical language and stories, recontextualizing them and re-envisioning our beliefs about what we have learned. "The Fall of Rome: A Traveller's Guide" contains brief but recurrent phrases like "A stranger is . . . ," with each ending changing and offering new insight. Readers weary of overtly intellectual poetry will find Carson emotionally accessible, and academics will appreciate her obvious knowledge of history and her mental acuity. But mostly, Carson will appeal to readers who are open minded, willing to ask, seek, and learn, and those wanting to be overcome, in a grand way, by an intense, urgent, new kind of poetry. Janet St. John

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 142 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; First edition. edition (November 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213021
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213028
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Poetry

More About the Author

Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur "Genius" Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The professor sets a high standard, December 7, 2001

By 

The Hammer (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Glass, Irony and God (Paperback)

This is some darned fine and aggravating poetry. The Glass Essay is a kind of hybrid of verse and essay; poetry with a point to make. The last piece, The Gender of Sound, is an essay --but you're not the sort of reader who reads reviews at Amazon if you're the sort who'll make it all the way through that sucker. I was with her for "the haunting garrulity of the nymph Echo" and could follow her assertion that Hemingway was afraid of Gertrude Stein the meat-eater because of her voice. Where I lost her, and bet you will too, though I admire and am jealous of those who won't, is when she veers into "lyric fragments of the archaic poet Alkaios" which she reproduces in the original language and explicates with words I am absolutely unfamiliar with. But here's the rub. Just because I can't follow where this Canadian classics professor's brain can go in an essay doesn't mean I can't read her poetry, slap the ground, say holy cow, and want to go out and be a better man because of it. The rigorous scholarship she shows off in the essay informs the poetry and prods along my reading of it. The Truth About God, TV Men, and The Fall of Rome are poetry nobody's written before.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovative form, July 8, 2001

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glass, Irony and God (Paperback)

This book contains one traditional essay, a fascinating study of language and gender (classical Greece to Freud), and five poems which blur the line between essay and poetry. The net result is the exploration of very complex thoughts in a very readable form - a form that hides the complexity behind very concrete, common life images.

In "The Glass Essay" grief over a lost relationship, the relationship between the Bronte sisters, the relationship between mother-daughter, and the writings of Emily Bronte are explored in a seamless manner.

"The Truth About God" is a search for the meaning of God in our era. The opening stanza sets the tone for the exploration: "My religion makes no sense / and does not help me / therefore I pursue it." It draws from Beethoven's life, from Teresa of Avila, from the apophatic theology ...

"TV men" mixes Greek heroes and Gods with filming - meet Hector and Socrates in a new environment. "The Fall of Rome: A Traveller's Guide" explores personal relationships (or lack thereof) when language becomes a barrier not a bridge. "Book of Isaiah" explores the mindset behind the Biblical text of Isaiah.

The strength of this book is that the vast knowledge behind the writing is made accessible to the reader rather than being required of the reader. This is a book that makes the reader want to read more of the author's work.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sui Generis, November 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Glass, Irony and God (Paperback)

"The Glass Essay," the long poem sequence that begins "Glass, Irony and God" is a great poem: lost love, moms, Emily Bronte are its main topics; an ambitious, one-of-a-kind poem from an ambitious, one-of-a-kind writer.