Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre

by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Anne Carson’s works re-think genre in some of the most unusual and nuanced ways that few writers ever attempt, from her lyric essays, enigmatic poems, and novels in verse to further forays into video and comics and collaborative performance. Carson’s pathbreaking translations of Ancient Greek poetry and drama, as well as her scholarship on everything from Sappho to Celan, only continue to demonstrate the unique vision she has for what’s possible for a work of literature to become.

Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre is the first book of essays dedicated to the breadth of Anne Carson’s works, individually, spanning from Eros the Bittersweet through Red Doc. With contributions from Kazim Ali, Dan Beachy-Quick, Julie Carr, Harmony Holiday, Cole Swensen, Eleni Sikelianos, and many others (including translators, poets, essayists, scholars, novelists, critics, and collaborators themselves), we learn from Carson’s greatest admirers and closest readers about the books that moved and inspired them.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2015

About the author

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author or editor of fifteen books, the most recent of which is his debut novel, Trouble Finds You (Fonograf 2023).

He lives in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, with the writer Lisa Wells, where they serve as series editors, with Mark Levine, of the Kuhl House Poets series for University of Iowa Press.

His work has appeared in Poetry, Tin House, The Believer, Iowa Review, A Public Space, and many others. After many years in academia, he now works as a psychotherapist.

Reviews

[river smallflower · Rating 4 out of 5]

harmony holiday's essay Wrecked me

[Mills College Library]

811.54 C3212Xw 2015

[Richard]

Finished but not finished. More to learn with each reading.