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Short Talks
Poetry. In Anne Carson's SHORT TALKS the reader is bombarded with short prose poems that resound with the fullness of meditations on lyric sermons, riddle-poems that consist only of answers, Lou Reed meets Claude Monet and converts to Zen, the pure hilarious ache of ontology. SHORT TALKS, the first book-length collection by this accomplished, original voice, is elegiac, perceptive, and droll. Sunday mornings are never going to be the same again. "The voice is laconic and composed but its images come off these pages resonant (more than resonant, shaking) with their own newness" -Don Coles.
57 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
35 people are currently reading
2580 people want to read
About the author
Anne Carson
97 books5,072 followersAnne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980 to 1987. She was a 1998 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also won a Lannan Literary Award.
Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.
Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.
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March 6, 2025
When I grow up, I want to be Anne Carson. Her work is always something that, at first glance, makes you wonder “what even is this?” but you start to read and it’s like the words suddenly become one of those Magic Eye posters but it’s of Anne Carson turning a PhD into a magic trick where she cuts open her head, pulls a rabbit out of her brain and then blasts you with a firehose of emotion and wit. With brilliance and brevity comes Short Talks, a collection of 45 very short “talks” about an eclectic variety of topics. From Van Gogh, Kafka, and Emily Brontë to housing, aeroplane takeoffs, and the Mona Lisa—who ‘knew mortal thirst’—Carson dazzles like looking at a disco ball through a kaleidoscope absolutely zooted on DMT. Published in 1992, Short Talks demonstrats Carson’s gift for lyrical prose that straddles the essay, poetry and literary criticism all at once and are written as if it were an exercise in destroying you in as few words as possible. Here, try this on for size:
SHORT TALK ON HEDONISM
Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
Carson, you’re killing me, how can you be so cool and good? And she delights across a myriad of topics in a book short enough to read on a bus commute while you are desperately trying to ignore the stranger next to you clipping their toenails. And these “poems” come in small, unassuming packages that hide a jack-in-the-box of emotive phrases that pop out and punch you directly in the face but like, imagine that in a good way. Following her statements in the introduction placing us in a world where ‘words were missing,’ she aims to achieve Aristotle’s metric of a “good story” where ‘everything that happens is pushed by something else.’ Be it the Biblical Noah and his passion for classifications ‘engulfing his life they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them,’ or Ovid—because ‘people in exile write so many letters’—’puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing,’ we watch events and historical figures “pushed” by something else towards something new. And it is astonishing on every page. Plus the loveliest person I know once wrote me a poem in the style of this book
SHORT TALK ON WALKING BACKWARDS
My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
These poems are able to invoke a great amount of thought and feeling and they arrive with such a delicate and delightful cadence. It is her task and she achieves beautifully:
SHORT TALK ON MY TASK
‘My task is to carry secret burdens for the world. People watch curiously. Yesterday morning at sunrise for example, you could have seen me on the breakwall carrying gauze. I also carry untimely ideas and sins in general or any faulty action that has been lowered together with you into this hour. Trust me. The trotting animal can restore red hearts to red.
I am happy to carry all these burdens of her wit and insight. ‘I am writing this to be as wrong as possible to you,’ she tells us, ‘replace the door when you leave, it says. Now you tell me how wrong that is, how long it glows. Tell me.’ Carson practically urges us to collaborate with her ideas and bring them to new life in our own minds. It is art of living, art to be shared while stuck in ‘the world, the most famous experimental prison of its time,’ and art that can say so much with so little. Plus, for a Carson collection, this is as endlessly accessible as it is entertaining despite having some rather esoteric references within it.
SHORT TALK ON SLEEP STONES
Camille Claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. Come visit me, she says. Remember I am living here with madwomen, days are long. She did not smoke or stroll. She refused to sculpt. Although they gave her sleep stones - marble and granite and porphyry - she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night. Night was when her hands grew, huger and huger until in the photograph they are like two parts of someone else loaded onto her knees.
Among the many references, painters and their paintings tends to be one of the major motifs here. I really love her ekphrastic poems, such as explaining the concept of light via a Rembrandt painting:
SHORT TALK ON THE END
What is the difference between light and lighting? There is an etching called The Three Crosses by Rembrandt. It is a picture of the earth and the sky and Calvary. A moment rains down on them, the plate grows darker. Darker. Rembrandt wakens you just in time to see matter stumble out of its forms.
Rembrandt shows up a few times, such as the Short Talk on his painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman, a painting of which only a fragment remains after it was a victim of fire in 1723, which depicts the doctor demonstrating the human brain on the body of Joris “Black Jan” Fonteijn. Carson tells the story his hanging and wonders about Elsje Otte, the sex worker with whom Fonteijn had been with the night of his burglary:
‘...One wonders if Elsje ever saw Rembrandt's painting, which shows her love thief in violent frontal foreshortening, so that his pure soles seem almost to touch the chopped open cerebrum. Cut and cut deep to find the source of the problem, Dr. Deyman is saying as he parts the brain to either side like hair. Sadness comes groping out of it.’
Anne Carson is such a delight. We do not deserve her, her work is too good for mere mortals to behold yet she gifts it to us anyways. And Short Talks is one of such gifts. I love this book.
5/5
SHORT TALK ON AFTERWORDS
An afterword should leave the skin quickly, like an alcohol rub. Here is an example, from Emily Tennyson’s grandmother, her complete diary entry for the day of her wedding, May 20, 1765:
"Finished Antigone, married Bishop"
Anne Carson art by Katy Horan
SHORT TALK ON HEDONISM
Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
Carson, you’re killing me, how can you be so cool and good? And she delights across a myriad of topics in a book short enough to read on a bus commute while you are desperately trying to ignore the stranger next to you clipping their toenails. And these “poems” come in small, unassuming packages that hide a jack-in-the-box of emotive phrases that pop out and punch you directly in the face but like, imagine that in a good way. Following her statements in the introduction placing us in a world where ‘words were missing,’ she aims to achieve Aristotle’s metric of a “good story” where ‘everything that happens is pushed by something else.’ Be it the Biblical Noah and his passion for classifications ‘engulfing his life they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them,’ or Ovid—because ‘people in exile write so many letters’—’puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing,’ we watch events and historical figures “pushed” by something else towards something new. And it is astonishing on every page. Plus the loveliest person I know once wrote me a poem in the style of this book
SHORT TALK ON WALKING BACKWARDS
My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
These poems are able to invoke a great amount of thought and feeling and they arrive with such a delicate and delightful cadence. It is her task and she achieves beautifully:
SHORT TALK ON MY TASK
‘My task is to carry secret burdens for the world. People watch curiously. Yesterday morning at sunrise for example, you could have seen me on the breakwall carrying gauze. I also carry untimely ideas and sins in general or any faulty action that has been lowered together with you into this hour. Trust me. The trotting animal can restore red hearts to red.
I am happy to carry all these burdens of her wit and insight. ‘I am writing this to be as wrong as possible to you,’ she tells us, ‘replace the door when you leave, it says. Now you tell me how wrong that is, how long it glows. Tell me.’ Carson practically urges us to collaborate with her ideas and bring them to new life in our own minds. It is art of living, art to be shared while stuck in ‘the world, the most famous experimental prison of its time,’ and art that can say so much with so little. Plus, for a Carson collection, this is as endlessly accessible as it is entertaining despite having some rather esoteric references within it.
SHORT TALK ON SLEEP STONES
Camille Claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. Come visit me, she says. Remember I am living here with madwomen, days are long. She did not smoke or stroll. She refused to sculpt. Although they gave her sleep stones - marble and granite and porphyry - she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night. Night was when her hands grew, huger and huger until in the photograph they are like two parts of someone else loaded onto her knees.
Among the many references, painters and their paintings tends to be one of the major motifs here. I really love her ekphrastic poems, such as explaining the concept of light via a Rembrandt painting:
SHORT TALK ON THE END
What is the difference between light and lighting? There is an etching called The Three Crosses by Rembrandt. It is a picture of the earth and the sky and Calvary. A moment rains down on them, the plate grows darker. Darker. Rembrandt wakens you just in time to see matter stumble out of its forms.
Rembrandt shows up a few times, such as the Short Talk on his painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman, a painting of which only a fragment remains after it was a victim of fire in 1723, which depicts the doctor demonstrating the human brain on the body of Joris “Black Jan” Fonteijn. Carson tells the story his hanging and wonders about Elsje Otte, the sex worker with whom Fonteijn had been with the night of his burglary:
‘...One wonders if Elsje ever saw Rembrandt's painting, which shows her love thief in violent frontal foreshortening, so that his pure soles seem almost to touch the chopped open cerebrum. Cut and cut deep to find the source of the problem, Dr. Deyman is saying as he parts the brain to either side like hair. Sadness comes groping out of it.’
Anne Carson is such a delight. We do not deserve her, her work is too good for mere mortals to behold yet she gifts it to us anyways. And Short Talks is one of such gifts. I love this book.
5/5
SHORT TALK ON AFTERWORDS
An afterword should leave the skin quickly, like an alcohol rub. Here is an example, from Emily Tennyson’s grandmother, her complete diary entry for the day of her wedding, May 20, 1765:
"Finished Antigone, married Bishop"
Anne Carson art by Katy Horan
January 25, 2014
This is like an experiment in how few words a poet can use to tear your heart out, or maybe just run her fingernails across it.
April 12, 2019
Más de 40 textos en prosa, pulidos y precisos como si fueran poemas. AnneCarson hace cosas con el lenguaje que me dejan embelesada. En la introducción de estas Charlas breves, dice que haría cualquier cosa para evitar el aburrimiento y enumera: «Nunca se sabe lo suficiente, nunca se trabaja lo suficiente, nunca se usan los infinitivos y los participios de manera suficientemente enrarecida...» y agradezco que así lo sienta y que el producto de su manía y de su hambre por estrujar y modelar la literatura a su antojo sean libros como éste (o como Eros).
Espero ansiosa el próximo libro de Bisturí 10.
Espero ansiosa el próximo libro de Bisturí 10.
December 23, 2022
o aspecto mais interessante foi a sensação de caça-niquél, sem saber para que direção cada fala curta tomaria. um insight? brincadeira? microconto? charada? poesia? porém nesses pequenos picos de expectativa também ficava uma frustração. do conjunto, gostei mesmo só de algumas. em termos de forma e experiência de leitura é divertido - como transformar em publicação, materializar a premissa do exercício de criar falas curtas, precisas sobre algo insólito e/ou pessoal e/ou absurdo e/ou grande e minúsculo. leitura leve e gostosinha, me deu vontade de conhecer mais da autora, mas não bateu tão forte aki.
May 6, 2022
kad bi bilo više od pet dala bih više od pet.
aristotel govori o verovatnosti i nužnosti, ali šta vredi čudo, šta vredi priča u kojoj nema otrovnih zmajeva. elem, nikad se ne može dovoljno raditi.
aristotel govori o verovatnosti i nužnosti, ali šta vredi čudo, šta vredi priča u kojoj nema otrovnih zmajeva. elem, nikad se ne može dovoljno raditi.
April 2, 2023
Gosto dos escritos poéticos da Anne Carson porque ela torna a poesia palpável, gente como a gente, simples, mas jamais simplório, é um tipo de autora que nos dá coragem em publicar.
December 27, 2018
En Karson pravi prava mala čuda od riječi. Iz jedne mješavine proznog, poetskog, esejističkog, svakodnevnog, intertekstualnog i intermedijalnog stvara prave male literarne svjetove. Oni se razumijevaju na različite načine i u različitoj mjeri, zavisno od čitalačkog iskustva svakog pojedinačnog čitaoca, rekla bih, ali i bez obzira na to, prava je divota kako se sa tako malo riječi, dobro probranih i uvezanih, tekst može učiniti tako živim. Kakvo fenomenalno otkriće za kraj ove godine!
January 21, 2019
El penúltimo libro que leí el 2018, el primero que leí el 2019. El lenguaje de Anne carson, su ritmo y sus asociaciones son tan bonitas como una canción que dan ganas de poner en repeat. Caíganle
January 29, 2019
Este libro es como un carrete del que nunca va a dejar de salir hilo.
February 9, 2022
"Major things are wind, evil, a good fighting horse, prepositions, inexhaustible love, the way people choose their king. Minor things include dirt, the names of schools of philosophy, mood and not having a mood, the correct time. There are more major things than minor things overall, yet there are more minor things than I have written here, but it is disheartening to list them. When I think of you reading this I do not want you to be taken captive, separated by a wire mesh lined with glass from your life itself, like some Elektra."
("Short Talk on Major and Minor", p42)
("Short Talk on Major and Minor", p42)
August 23, 2019
absolutely fantastic. aaaaagh.
Read
June 27, 2025Σύμβολα, λυρισμός, εσωτερικότητα.. Υπαινικτική και ταυτόχρονα πολύ π��κνή γραφή, σχεδόν αδύνατο να διασχίσεις αυτό το δάσος. Αινιγματικές εικόνες, τα καλύτερα της ποιήματα. Κάποιες φράσεις της κατάφεραν να με αδράξουν, όμως:
“Ταξίδεψα σ’ έναν τόπο ερειπωμένο. Υπήρχαν τρεις αυλόπορτες που έχασκαν μισάνοιχτες κι ένας φράχτης που έγινε κομμάτια. Δεν ήταν το ερείπιο ενός άλλου συγκεκριμένου πράγματος. Ήρθε ένας τόπος και συνετρίβη εκεί. Και μετά παρέμεινε ένας ερειπωμένος τόπος. Πάνω του έπεσε φως.”
ΠΟΥ ΝΑ ΤΑΞΙΔΕΨΕΙΣ
“Ταξίδεψα σ’ έναν τόπο ερειπωμένο. Υπήρχαν τρεις αυλόπορτες που έχασκαν μισάνοιχτες κι ένας φράχτης που έγινε κομμάτια. Δεν ήταν το ερείπιο ενός άλλου συγκεκριμένου πράγματος. Ήρθε ένας τόπος και συνετρίβη εκεί. Και μετά παρέμεινε ένας ερειπωμένος τόπος. Πάνω του έπεσε φως.”
ΠΟΥ ΝΑ ΤΑΞΙΔΕΨΕΙΣ
February 24, 2025
Sinto que não consegui aproveitar todo o potencial do livro porque me falta um repertório cultural e/ou disposição para pesquisar a fundo os assuntos que a autora deixou nas entrelinhas.
Tenho muito problema em abrir mão de REALMENTE entender (ou, pelo menos, ter a impressão de que estou entendendo o suficiente), então em algumas falas fiquei frustrada por não fazer sentido. Talvez por isso, também tenho alguma resistência em ler poesia.
Foi uma leitura coletiva com o pessoal do podcast 30:min, e o pouco que trocamos até agora foi bem legal. Se não fosse uma leitura coletiva, acho que teria desistido já na introdução.
Tenho muito problema em abrir mão de REALMENTE entender (ou, pelo menos, ter a impressão de que estou entendendo o suficiente), então em algumas falas fiquei frustrada por não fazer sentido. Talvez por isso, também tenho alguma resistência em ler poesia.
Foi uma leitura coletiva com o pessoal do podcast 30:min, e o pouco que trocamos até agora foi bem legal. Se não fosse uma leitura coletiva, acho que teria desistido já na introdução.
January 5, 2023
another delightful collection from anne carson! i started men in the off hours recently but actually found it a bit too esoteric for me to get through, but this one is right in that sweet spot that i really enjoyed in beauty of the husband - and has the added benefit of being a quick read. really great stuff
short talk on the anatomy lesson of dr. deyman
a winter so cold that, walking on the breestraat and you passed from sun to shadow you could feel the difference run down your skull like water. it was the hunger winter of 1656 when black jan took up with a whore named elsje otte and for a time they prospered. but one icy january day black jan was observed robbing a cloth merchant's house. he ran, fell, knifed a man and was hanged on the twenty-seventh of january. how he fared then is no doubt known to you: the cold weather permitted dr. deyman to turn the true eye of medicine on black jan for three days. one wonders if elsje ever saw rembrandt's painting, which shows her love thief in violent frontal foreshortening, so that his pure soles seem almost to touch the chopped open cerebrum. cut and cut deep to find the source of the problem, dr. deyman is saying as he parts the brain to either side like hair. sadness comes groping out of it.
short talk on hedonism
beauty makes me hopeless. i don't care why anymore i just want to get away. when i look at the city of paris i long to wrap my legs around it. when i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, i no longer gather what falls.
short talk on the king and his courage
he arose laden with doubt as to how he should begin. he looked back at the bed where the grindstone lay. he looked out at the world, the most famous experimental prison of its time. beyond the torture stakes he could see, nothing. yet he could see.
short talk on sleep stones
camille claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. come visit me, she says. remember i am living here with madwomen, days are long. she did not smoke or stroll. she refused to sculpt. although they gave her sleep stones - marble and granite and porphyry - she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night. night was when her hands grew, huger and huger until in the photograph they are like two parts of someone else loaded onto her knees.
short talk on the anatomy lesson of dr. deyman
a winter so cold that, walking on the breestraat and you passed from sun to shadow you could feel the difference run down your skull like water. it was the hunger winter of 1656 when black jan took up with a whore named elsje otte and for a time they prospered. but one icy january day black jan was observed robbing a cloth merchant's house. he ran, fell, knifed a man and was hanged on the twenty-seventh of january. how he fared then is no doubt known to you: the cold weather permitted dr. deyman to turn the true eye of medicine on black jan for three days. one wonders if elsje ever saw rembrandt's painting, which shows her love thief in violent frontal foreshortening, so that his pure soles seem almost to touch the chopped open cerebrum. cut and cut deep to find the source of the problem, dr. deyman is saying as he parts the brain to either side like hair. sadness comes groping out of it.
short talk on hedonism
beauty makes me hopeless. i don't care why anymore i just want to get away. when i look at the city of paris i long to wrap my legs around it. when i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, i no longer gather what falls.
short talk on the king and his courage
he arose laden with doubt as to how he should begin. he looked back at the bed where the grindstone lay. he looked out at the world, the most famous experimental prison of its time. beyond the torture stakes he could see, nothing. yet he could see.
short talk on sleep stones
camille claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. come visit me, she says. remember i am living here with madwomen, days are long. she did not smoke or stroll. she refused to sculpt. although they gave her sleep stones - marble and granite and porphyry - she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night. night was when her hands grew, huger and huger until in the photograph they are like two parts of someone else loaded onto her knees.
August 30, 2025
Anne Carson, como sempre, lembrando que o cotidiano é cheio de poesia.
As falas lembram epigramas gregos e ressoam por mais tempo do que a princípio pensamos ser possível. Tudo lindo.
As falas lembram epigramas gregos e ressoam por mais tempo do que a princípio pensamos ser possível. Tudo lindo.
August 31, 2025
uma fala curta sobre carson:
https://open.substack.com/pub/novasre...
https://open.substack.com/pub/novasre...
September 26, 2019
Kratko, najkraće moguće - maestralne minijature!
Nešto između pesama, mikroeseja i fleš fikcije. Neke celine su poput divnih kutija Džozefa Kornela, neke su intrigantni i poetizovani čitalački komentari, a neke kondenzovane, zagrcnute povesti. I ovo je, da se poslužim Krležinom sintagmom - 'literarna literatura', književnost koja snagu crpi iz same književnosti, međutim prosvane pokoji životni impuls, misaoni udarac koji prene i dovodi do obrta.
Ja ne bih bio ja kad ne bih posebno istakao 'Kratko slovo o sveobuhvatnoj kolekciji' - najkraću formu o najvećem za koju znam.
Nešto između pesama, mikroeseja i fleš fikcije. Neke celine su poput divnih kutija Džozefa Kornela, neke su intrigantni i poetizovani čitalački komentari, a neke kondenzovane, zagrcnute povesti. I ovo je, da se poslužim Krležinom sintagmom - 'literarna literatura', književnost koja snagu crpi iz same književnosti, međutim prosvane pokoji životni impuls, misaoni udarac koji prene i dovodi do obrta.
Ja ne bih bio ja kad ne bih posebno istakao 'Kratko slovo o sveobuhvatnoj kolekciji' - najkraću formu o najvećem za koju znam.
June 10, 2022
“short talk on hedonism: beauty makes me hopeless. i don’t care why anymore i just want to get away. when i look at the city of paris i long to wrap my legs around it. when i watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, i no longer gather what falls.”
me gusta sentir que leo las notas del celu de anne carson.
me gusta sentir que leo las notas del celu de anne carson.
June 1, 2020
No sé que magia hace
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October 27, 2017Man måste hata Carson lite, hennes bildning, tonsäkerhet och stringens. I små passager lyckas hon förmedla mer än jag någonsin kommer frammana under ett helt liv, med ett språk jag aldrig kommer att äga.
Varför läser jag ens andra författare än henne?
Sidenote: Läste precis en intervju med Carson i The Guardian som fick mig att skratta:
Geni.
Varför läser jag ens andra författare än henne?
Sidenote: Läste precis en intervju med Carson i The Guardian som fick mig att skratta:
I like your poem Short Talk on Mona Lisa and wonder if she continues to be a riddle?
I never liked Mona Lisa. This continues.
Geni.
May 19, 2024
Anne Carson never fails to reinvigorate my love for poetry.
May 8, 2025
Super quick read! But only a couple of these actually stuck with me.
February 23, 2021
yo solo quiero entender 2 cosas:
¿por qué fue esto escrito? y ¿por qué fue esto publicado?
y no lo digo porque crea que la escritura es mala porque realmente no lo es, sino porque no entiendo el propósito del libro y cual es la motivación de la autora al sacar esto y ponerlo a disposición del mundo.
estoy segura que en las aplicaciones de notas en miles de celulares en todo el mundo puedo encontrar casi el mismo contenido que me ofrece este libro porque eso es: un montón de pensamientos al azar, sin relación el uno con el otro que terminan apareciendo en la mente de una persona. en el caso de anne carson estos pensamientos surgen de forma lírica pero igual ni creo que eso amerite que sean publicados como libro.
no sé si es que yo soy estupida y se supone que esto debe tener un trasfondo que no pude captar pero simplemente no logro entender el apelativo de este libro.
¿por qué fue esto escrito? y ¿por qué fue esto publicado?
y no lo digo porque crea que la escritura es mala porque realmente no lo es, sino porque no entiendo el propósito del libro y cual es la motivación de la autora al sacar esto y ponerlo a disposición del mundo.
estoy segura que en las aplicaciones de notas en miles de celulares en todo el mundo puedo encontrar casi el mismo contenido que me ofrece este libro porque eso es: un montón de pensamientos al azar, sin relación el uno con el otro que terminan apareciendo en la mente de una persona. en el caso de anne carson estos pensamientos surgen de forma lírica pero igual ni creo que eso amerite que sean publicados como libro.
no sé si es que yo soy estupida y se supone que esto debe tener un trasfondo que no pude captar pero simplemente no logro entender el apelativo de este libro.
May 5, 2016
I've been carrying around this book; borrowed from an American library on inter-library loan, in my bag for about a month. Reading a passage or 2 or 10 whenever I get the chance, flicking through it until a title jumps out at me. I read it cover to cover on the train this morning and I'll be sad to return it soon. Always nice to get lost in a good bit of poetry.
July 20, 2021
”Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.”
June 26, 2007
I picked this book up this morning and felt a little thrill. I love this book. The poems are like these short little creatures of force, stunning and then over.
The painting on the cover is by her.
The painting on the cover is by her.
March 3, 2020
Este libro de Anne Carson, reconocida poetisa canadiense, reúne cuarenta y cinco charlas sobre diversos temas. En sus hojas se descubre la enorme capacidad de observación de la autora quien además exhibe con maestría la simpleza de su particular estilo.
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March 12, 2018"Vi är halva och återigen halva, vi är språkstumpen."
"Begär runda som persikor slår upp inom mig hela natten, jag plockar inte längre upp det som faller."
"Begär runda som persikor slår upp inom mig hela natten, jag plockar inte längre upp det som faller."
October 6, 2022
"Out on the sea it is raining too. It beats on no one."
March 15, 2025
Anne Carson ❤️
1. SHORT TALK ON RAIN
It was blacker than olives the night I left. As I ran past the palaces, oddly joyful, it began to rain. What a notion it is, after all – these small shapes! I would get lost counting them. Who first thought of it? How did he describe it to the others? Out on the sea it is raining too. It beats on no one.
2. SHORT TALK ON VAN GOGH
The reason I drink is to understand the yellow sky the great yellow sky, said Van Gogh. When he looked at the world he saw the nails that attach colours to things and he saw that the nails were in pain.
3. SHORT TALK ON MY TASK
My task is to carry secret burdens for the world. People watch curiously. Yesterday morning at sunrise for example, you could have seen me on the breakwall carrying gauze. I also carry untimely ideas and sins in general or any faulty action that has been lowered together with you into this hour. Trust me. The trotting animal can restore red hearts to red.
4. SHORT TALK ON LE BONHEUR D’ÊTRE BIEN AIMÈE
Day after day I think of you as soon as I wake up. Someone has put cries of birds on the air like jewels.
5. SHORT TALK ON HEDONISM
Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
6. SHORT TALK ON WALKING BACKWARDS
My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
1. SHORT TALK ON RAIN
It was blacker than olives the night I left. As I ran past the palaces, oddly joyful, it began to rain. What a notion it is, after all – these small shapes! I would get lost counting them. Who first thought of it? How did he describe it to the others? Out on the sea it is raining too. It beats on no one.
2. SHORT TALK ON VAN GOGH
The reason I drink is to understand the yellow sky the great yellow sky, said Van Gogh. When he looked at the world he saw the nails that attach colours to things and he saw that the nails were in pain.
3. SHORT TALK ON MY TASK
My task is to carry secret burdens for the world. People watch curiously. Yesterday morning at sunrise for example, you could have seen me on the breakwall carrying gauze. I also carry untimely ideas and sins in general or any faulty action that has been lowered together with you into this hour. Trust me. The trotting animal can restore red hearts to red.
4. SHORT TALK ON LE BONHEUR D’ÊTRE BIEN AIMÈE
Day after day I think of you as soon as I wake up. Someone has put cries of birds on the air like jewels.
5. SHORT TALK ON HEDONISM
Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
6. SHORT TALK ON WALKING BACKWARDS
My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
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