Anne Carson’s poems are intellectually daring, emotionally charged, and unlike almost anything else in contemporary poetry. She is known for blending classical Greek literature, philosophy, history, and modern life into poems that feel both ancient and sharply contemporary.
Carson often breaks traditional poetic forms. Her work moves freely between poetry, essay, translation, and criticism, creating a hybrid style that challenges readers to think as much as to feel. In books like Autobiography of Red, Glass, Irony and God, and Plainwater, she explores themes of desire, loss, love, eros, grief, and silence with a cool, precise intensity.
One of the most striking qualities of Anne Carson’s poetry is its intellectual clarity paired with deep emotional restraint. She does not overwhelm with sentiment; instead, she uses spare language, sharp images, and philosophical reflection to reveal the pain and beauty of human experience. Her poems often ask difficult questions about how language fails, how love wounds, and how memory survives.
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| Anne carson |
Carson’s work rewards slow reading. It invites readers who enjoy poetry that is thought-provoking, experimental, and emotionally honest, making her one of the most influential and respected poets of our time.
Clive Song
If I were an early person
I'd look for the limits of human wisdom
by going to sacred oak trees
or the local blind man with lips on fire.
But this is now. This is NYC.
I go to Clive.
We meet in a diner
and queue for the breakfast special.
Clive's British.
He tries to make the large Hispanic short-order cook appreciate "underdone"
French toast. "My wife told me
not to say soggy," says Clive.
We pay. Currie shows up.
We sit and talk
of Clive's next trip to Guantanamo where,
although he's visited 56 times, they're questioning
(this time) his signature.
He laughs.
His current client, a Moroccan man,
has been cleared for release
and also informed
he will never leave.
Clive, a lawyer,questions the logic of this.
"I shouldn't laugh."
He tells more stories.
"Evidence" at Guantanamo comes often from snitches.
When the same snitch brought evidence
against 300 different people,
Clive wondered about motive
and did some research. The fact was,
each time the guy snitched
he got a free pass to "the love shack"
where the Americans show porn.
Clive plans to question
the number 300
on statistical grounds.
Most of us know only 300 people
in the whole world, demographers say.
If you think like a lawyer
you find the limits of human wisdom
in facts like that.
His French toast arrives.
"Is it underdone?" I ask. He sighs
and tells
of his son at home who's obsessed with The Goon Show.
I don't think like a lawyer.
I'm looking to see
how the sacred oaks come whispering through a man like Clive,
now striving for people on death row or places like Gitmo
for 35 years,
but worried
his son doesn't see the merits of Monty Python
or grasp its direct descent from the Goons.
I imagine a tumbling squabbling family
back home in the Midlands.
Clive looks at his watch.
I take scraps of French toast to the trash.
We'll meet again.
He likes the idea
(Currie's idea)
of travelling around Pakistan with a troop of square dancers.
Because the square dance is a "greeting dance
and we need more greeting! Clive smiles
and goes up the street
in his saggy-butt pants,
looking not much like a high-powered lawyer,
and the limits of human wisdom remain
(as we who confuse the greetings of dogs and gods
prefer limits
do) more
or less
where they were.
He Was Fourteen
HE WAS FOURTEEN
it was years ago and Sad’s
name wasn’t Sad yet. First
comet. G had just
stumbled off a bus they
looked at one another and
that lasted until G was
almost twenty but he.
Well. Being a loyal soul
himself. Sad’s need to
make friends everywhere.
Sex friends club friends
gym friends dope friends
shopping friends
breakdown friends a
common enough problem.
Sad didn’t see a problem.
One day he looked around
and G was gone.
Wife of Brain
don't say you weren't
expecting a volcano those
red wings
that not even bad love can tame
must signify something's
somewhere
about to go up in flame or
(as Proust says) be
eternalized in pleasure
like the men
in a Pompeian house of ill
fate yet fame
is not ill
for all
Losing A Lover
Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.
It is as if I could dip my hand down
into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.
I can feel that other day running underneath this one
like an old videotape.
Monogamous
Monogamous.
I'm interested in monogamous.
I got married last May
and had my honeymoon is Stykkishólmur.
This year I returned to Stykkishólmur
to live with my husband
for three months in one small room.
This extreme monogamy
proved almost too much for us.
Rather than murder each other
we rented a second place
(Greta's house)
near the pool.
Now we are happily duogamous.
Short Talk on Geisha
The question of geisha and sex has always been complex.
Some do, some don’t. In fact, as you know, the first
geisha were men (jesters and drummers). Their risky
patter made the guests laugh. But by 1780 “geisha”
meant woman and the glamorous business of the tea
houses had been brought under government control.
Some geisha were artists and called themselves
“white”. Others with nicknames like “cat” and
“tumbler” set up shacks every night on the wide
river bed, to vanish by dawn. The important
thing was, someone to yearn for. Whether the
quilt was long, or the night was too long, or
you were given this place to sleep or that
place to sleep, someone to wait for until
she is coming along and the grass is stirring,
a tomato in her palm.
New Rule
A New Year’s white morning of hard new ice.
High on the frozen branches I saw a squirrel jump and skid.
Is this scary? he seemed to say and glanced
down at me, clutching his branch as it bobbed
in stiff recoil – or is it just that everything sounds wrong today?
The branches
clinked.
He wiped his small cold lips with one hand.
Do you fear the same things as
I fear? I countered, looking up.
His empire of branches slid against the air.
The night of hooks?
The man blade left open on the stair?
Not enough spin on it, said my true love
when he left in our fifth year.
The squirrel bounced down a branch
and caught a peg of tears.
The way to hold on is
afterwords
so
clear.
Venice
That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted
although married six months.
Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure
we got it right.
He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully.
Early next day
I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published
in a small quarterly magazine.
Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.
Or should I say ideal.
Neither of us had ever seen Venice.
