Plainwater: Essays and Poetry [Paperback]

Anne Carson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2000

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Despite her fastidious, ornately post-modern style, Carson finds her subject matter in classicism. The fruits of this unique, difficult combination are strikingly displayed in this selection of her published work. Seemingly composed of equal parts enigma, experiment and exegesis, Carson's writings incorporate a dizzying spectrum of forms?prose poem, mock interview, travel journal, academic essay. "Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings" explores what are perhaps figmentary fragments of the ancient Greek poet's work, which divulges "a kind of hunger for the motions of the self that we are mining still." The blurb-like, often humorous paragraphs and prose poems of "Short Talks" (which are "on" subjects as varied as chromoluminism and Sylvia Plath) and "The Life of Towns" (with stops in "Apostle Town" and "Town of Greta Garbo") afford the pleasure of a whimsical crossword puzzle. But Carson achieves a surreal, perplexing brilliance in "Canicula di Anna," a 53-section poem partially set in the paintings of the 16th-century artist Perugino. The final selection, "The Anthropology of Water," takes an abruptly confessional turn, though one measured (as the title suggests) by the poet's near-scientific intellectualism that, as in all these writings, gives her work a dazzling lucidity.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Carson's poetry and prose defy categorization as much as they blur the boundaries of their own forms. In fact, nearly formless, Carson's writing resists convention through word variation and substitution, stretching language to create new meanings, formulas, and outcomes. For example, in "The Life of Towns," town becomes a representative letter like a in the formula: if ab and bc, then ac. In other words, townviewpointself and self includes all the various vantage points and different ways of expressing vision. Carson, a professor of ancient Greek and Latin, incorporates classical languages and a mythological sensibility in surprising ways throughout her work. The strongest and most engaging section is "Short Talks" (from her book by that title), which was excerpted in the 1992 Best American Essays but could have just as easily appeared in a poetry anthology. The pieces have the appeal of haiku and the experimental quality of language poetry by Scalapino and Lauterbach. These "talks" gracefully unite the vivid metaphor and rhythm of poetry with the contemplative and digressive discourse of essay. Carson knows the rules of language and how to break them. This is stimulating, rare, and challenging writing, fabulous food for thought--for the adventurous reader. Janet St. John --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375708421
• ISBN-13: 978-0375708428
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #33 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Canadian

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

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plainwater is a book heady with the theme of loss, June 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (Hardcover)

Plainwater is a work of art that is unlike any contemporary piece of writing I've read. It's heady with the themes of loss and freedom and the narrator speaks from a place of quiet intensity that burns more vehemently with each observation. She is on a road-trip, the narrator, with a companion that threatens an isolation more profound than any found alone. Constantly is the backdrop, the theme, and the language of water. One can get lost in Carson's language and, like any work of poetry, the language crosses the line and becomes something else: you are at one point no longer reading but are taking in the narrator's interior life as your own. The landscape of your mind and the story has become one and the same through the median skin of the words. Can't recommend this book highly enough. Like Glass, Irony and God- it bespeaks of maps not really charted by any other contemporary writer but maps that any woman will recognize as partly her own. It crosses into philosophy and parable simply in its adherance to its own interiority: like Hesse, Goethe, Novalis, Holderlin, Rilke et al... it shifts into another kind of story, the kinds that are shamanistic, that place in the reader reflections of their own truth.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the ancient world emerges, January 21, 2003

By 

marci dean (notich, tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (Paperback)

wow. i first picked up this book last week and am blown away. the work of anne carson seems to be speaking from a world only newly unearthed...grainy and weird and wonderful!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars my favorite book ever, September 28, 2002

By 

"bicycleaesthetic" (portland, or) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (Paperback)

the last section of this book-- the anthropology of water-- is my favorite piece of writing i have ever read. it's amazing. you can read it 50 times and still get something new out of it.