Anne Carson

Poet

1950-06-21

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, and classicist known for innovative writing that blends poetry, translation, and scholarship. Her work has received major international literary recognition.

Books by Anne Carson

If Not, Winter

Fragments of Sappho
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Autobiography of Red
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Eros the bittersweet
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Quotes by Anne Carson

I will not stop singingthe Muses who set me dancing.
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Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.
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Kreon: here are Kreon's verbs for todayAdjudicateLegislateScandalizeCapitalizehere are Kreon's nounsMenReasonTreasonDeathShip of StateMineChorus: mine isn't a nounKreon: it is if you capitalize it
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XXIV. And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud
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He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.
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Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.
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What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away.
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Then the edge asserts itself. You are not a god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you now see. Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual.
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Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.
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Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...
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Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
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That night we made love the real way which we had not yet attemptedalthough married six months.Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not surewe got it right.He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully.Early next dayI wrote a short talk (On Defloration) which he stole and had publishedin a small quarterly magazine.Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.Or should I say ideal.Neither of us had ever seen Venice.
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[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.
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Now every mortal has painand sweat is constant,but if there is anything dearer than being alive,it's dark to me.We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth--we call it life. We know no other.The underworld's a blankand all the rest just fantasy.
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To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.
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Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen.There's no one alivewho can say if he will be tomorrow.Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery.No one can teach it, no one can grasp it.Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink!You can let the rest go. Am I making sense?I think so. How about a drink.Put on a garland. I'm surethe happy splash of wine will cure your mood.We're all mortal you know. Think mortal.Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life,
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LIII.What is the holiness of conversation? It isto master death.
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THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM[all snap flags]Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
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I will not stop singingthe Muses who set me dancing.
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Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...
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