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Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
 
 
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Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (Paperback)

by Anne Carson (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  (11 customer reviews)

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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 The Boston Review
"I will do anything to avoid boredom," writes Carson in the section entitled "Short Talks." It is the task of a lifetime. Carson's work questions the boundaries of traditional forms by including invented dialogue (between herself and Mimnermos, a poet of the 7th century BC), brief musings on a variety of unrelated subjects ("On Trout," "On Disappointments in Music," "On Hedonism"), travelogue and journal entries of a character named Anna at a phenomenology conference, and poems that treat concepts and figures as if they were towns: "Freud Town," "Town of Greta Garbo," "Town of the Death of Sin." Never glib, nor ever merely polemical, this melange is poignant and laconic. Just when we thought the postmodernists had said everything there was to say about words, grammar, and punctuation (on the one side) and time, location, and people (on the other), Carson takes us that little bit farther.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details
  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (March 28, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0375708421
  • ISBN-13: 978-0375708428
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: