Plainwater (Vintage Contemporaries): Essays and Poetry

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Allen, R. E. N.; Carr, Angela, eds. (2001). The Matrix Interviews – Moosehead Anthology Issue 8. Montreal: DC Books. ISBN 9780919688865.

Fall 1994). "The Gender of Sound: Description, Definition and Mistrust of the Female Voice in Western Culture". Resources for Feminist Research. 23 (3): 24–31. Carson, Anne (1981). Odi et Amo Ergo Sum. Toronto: University of Toronto. [Doctoral thesis; under the name Anne Carson Giacomelli] 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.Anne Carson: Well, I think every piece of work has its own voice, and you have to figure out what that is, sort of work into it. It’s not the same voice from piece to piece. So when I read this now, it seemed like someone else wrote it. But I find that each thought has a sound inside it. I mean, you can hear in your head how the thought should sound like. Sometimes there are rhythms and melodies even before there are words, and you have to find the words that fit into that rhythm or melody. But the voice comes with the thought, for me. This journey serves in many ways as a foil to the one Carson describes in “Just for the Thrill.” This section takes its title from a Ray Charles song and is set in North America (mostly the United States), although it is also rich with allusions to ancient China and its treatment of women. The speaker, who had always seen herself as rather disinterested in sex, is on a road trip across the country with a man she has fallen in love with, whom she desires but also seems to harbor some fear of. On first meeting him, she believed him to be a homosexual, which relieved her; now, she views his sexuality in an “anthropological” way and thinks of him as “the Emperor” because he is writing a dissertation on the concept of concubinage in ancient China. As the pair travel across America, the speaker considers her own loneliness in love, as well as her discomfort at being viewed as a woman. An empty house is indefinite as a horse. It is an echo chamber, born to convince us of ourselves. As I was saying that, I was distracted. I was withdrawing into boxes that will later be unboxed. It is easy to be distracted by random objects on the walls. The bedside table spilling over with books and coffee mugs. Robert Currie: Well, there are a zillion different ways to collaborate. John Cage and Merce Cunningham worked separately and then combined what they made the evening of the performance. [Igor] Stravinsky and George Balanchine worked note by note through a score to the movement of a dance. And they were both extraordinary collaborations. But when Anne and I collaborate, it always starts with her text, it always starts in the same place; she gives me the text and I wander around with it, and deal with it. And I don’t think we talk that much about it, until we get to a certain point. Anne Carson: I don’t believe I’m much of a method actor. I don’t think I would make dinner while talking to myself as Geryon [ Autobiography of Red’s protagonist], or argue with Currie in the voice of Isaiah, although, that might be effective, now that I think about it.

Euripides, Iphigenia Among the Taurians. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-20362-1. Anne Carson: Well, that’s the thing about this kind of religious penance, if that’s what it is, that it’s a game you make up. The only thing you have to do is make up some rules and then keep the rules, no matter what. That’s what pilgrims do. And there’s all these different ways to do it. Like when I did it with my friend, we walked the whole way. So it was 380 miles or something, it took six weeks, and we walked every day till we got to the next town. But there are a lot of people nowadays who commit themselves to taking a bus to the outskirts of town, the limit of the town, and they walk into the town center to be part of the practice of walking a pilgrimage. So it sort of seems hypocritical or even fake, but it’s just the question of you making up rules for yourself and keeping them. It’s like monopoly.April 2013). "By Chance the Cycladic People". London Review of Books. 35 (8): 35 . Retrieved 9 September 2020. Ziegler, Alan, ed. (2014). Short: An International Anthology of Five Centuries of Short-short Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms. New York: Persea Books. ISBN 9780892554324. Screaming in Translation: The Elektra of Sophokles". In Dunn, Francis M. (ed.). Sophocles' Electra in Performance. Stuttgart: M & P. ISBN 978-3-476-45146-0 . Retrieved 24 July 2020. Bloom, Harold; Lehman, David, eds. (1998). The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997. New York: Scribner Poetry. ISBN 0-684-84779-5 . Retrieved 17 July 2020.