The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Though Anne Carson's poetry is shot through with the myths and images of the classical world, that ancient light helps illuminate contemporary situations and concerns. A classics professor at McGill University in Montreal, Carson has arrived in a surprisingly short time as one of Canada's finest poets. More than that, her exquisite, intelligent, highly original poems put her in the first rank of world poets. In The Beauty of the Husband, subtitled A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, she explores her ambiguous feelings toward a difficult but intriguing marriage. Each poem begins with a short quote from John Keats, whose idea that "beauty is truth" is the thread holding together a relationship with a man addicted to lying and philandering. A scoundrel ("He lied when it wasn't even convenient"), the husband is redeemed and forgiven almost everything because of beauty.

For Carson, the truth is "layered and elusive," hidden under the conversations of a thousand nights, nights when the lights were still on at dawn. There is a daring quality to Carson's work, a startling vision and perspective that will not be judged by normal standards. By penetrating to the core of a relationship, Carson stands convention on its head and finds "the light that pain brings." These poems bespeak the brilliance and shade of shape-shifting truth and conjure a freshness of language that shimmers. Somehow it seems fitting that the book itself, as an object to hold and behold, is also beautiful. --Mark Frutkin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

After the Canadian classicist, polymath and MacArthur "genius grant" winner's much-acclaimed verse-novel Autobiography of Red (1997)Aand exactly a year after Men in the Off HoursAcomes a second book-length, mostly-narrative poem: this charming, edgy, insistently intertextual and finally heartbreaking sequence about unlikely courtship, modern marriage, divorce and "primordial eros and strife." The 29 short chapters Carson calls "Tangos" imagine and analyze, in jaggedly memorable verse, the ill-starred romance between the narrator and her charismatic, needy and unfaithful husband, who writes her romantic letters in her teenage years, introduces her to his tragic friend Ray, cheats on her with women named Merced and Dolor, takes her on a tour of the Peloponnese and begs her to reverse her decision to leave him. The plot emerges through Carson's meditative, elusive fragments, mysteriously isolated couplets, excerpts from versified conversations and letters, interior monologues and (as Carson's readers have come to expect) digressions on matters of classical scholarship. This kind of thing is imitated badly and often by others, but Carson's phraseology within poems remains her own: "Rotate the husband and expose a hidden side," she urges early on; later, "words// are a strange docile wheat are they not, they bend/ to the ground." And if some of Carson's devotees seek just such cryptic moments, others will want, and get, more direct shows of emotion: "Proust/ used to weep over days gone by," she asks the reader, "do you?" (Feb.) Forecast: Carson was the subject of a New York Times Magazine feature this yearAshe is one of the very few poets writing now to cross over into trade-like sales. The wave of publicity may have crested, but this book should be well reviewed, and name recognition should kick in if the book is displayed along with current fiction, which the subtitle obviously encourages.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (February 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375707573
• ISBN-13: 978-0375707575
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #112,053 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love Hurts, February 24, 2002

By	"krchicago" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Anne Carson has written a beautiful book of poems/tangoes that somehow tell the story of a marriage without actually telling a story. We have fully realized moments, conversations (Carson writes amazing poetic conversations, here and in her other works), events -- without all the connections in between. And yet these moments are woven together, internally and from one tango to the next, with language used as the steps of a dance, providing motifs and figures that carry the reader from one page to the next. Dance, games, rules, war, the rules of war, love, beauty, truth, lies and betrayal -- all of these themes run in and out of the complicated pattern of steps. The technique always serves the lyric, however, and we never lose sight of the feelings Carson wishes to evoke. You feel the separate pains of each betrayal (her betrayal of her mother, the not-yet-husband's failure to appear for their wedding, his first infidelity, each subsequent lie), but despite the pain there is no bitterness in this book -- in fact, Carson's final advice is to "hold beauty." Just as you cannot tell the tale of the lover without telling the tale of the beloved (as the final poem ironically suggests), so, perhaps, you cannot have love, beauty and truth without their opposites. Carson, plainly, is on the side of beauty.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VERY STRONG BOOK BY A MAJOR POET IN ENGLISH, April 30, 2001

By	Matthew Bialer (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Hardcover)

I disagree with the naysayers.....I just heard Ms. Carson read some of these poems and they are powerful and emotional. These poems are very different from GLASS, IRONY AND GOD or AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN RED but she is just increasing her range. I am amazed at how wide she is able to cast her net, her economy of language, her wide range of references in history, literature, the classics, pop culture. I think when you see her read (and I think her poetry is still great if one doesn't hear her read) her wry humour really clicks....it is amazing how much emotion she is able to convey through her wit....I think she is one of the most unique and refreshing voices in literature today. She is a very exciting poet.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unique Talent, February 23, 2001

By	Max Pierman (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Hardcover)

Anne Carson's poetry reflects an unusual intelligence. Her coruscating language combined with a sensitive nature make for a truly unusual book of poetry.