Capturing the Spirit of the Age
Anne Carson has received the Pushcart Prize and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry; Michael Ondaatje ha... read full description
reviews
Apr 18, 2011
Ben
rated it: 
Anne Carson doesn't just defy categorization - she flaunts her defiance and changes masks and dances around and starts speaking in Latin and then does something quite easy to categorize (like an essay) even though the book's stamped POETRY on the back cover. I dig her, and anyways, I'd basically have to be terminally lame to not dig her, but I have yet to be quotably "moved" by her (and I don't just mean emotionally I mean, like, a narrative arc or even contrast... any movement besides
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Dec 12, 2010
Patrick
rated it:
Like the majority of MacArthur fellows, Anne Carson went largely unnoticed until she received a half million dollars. Unlike the majority of MacArthur fellows, readers are starting to recognize her name. Along with Derek Walcott, Charles Simic, John Ashbery, and Adrienne Rich, Carson enjoys inclusion in a small group of MacArthur poets who are likely to yield more than 100,000 results in your run-of-the-mill search engine. Certainly there’s something special about Anne Carson. In reading her sig
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Jun 14, 2009
Steve
rated it:
It is best not to read Anne Carson's poems in isolation, but rather to read a collection (well, at least not this one) in one sitting -- if possible -- and later return to poke through the shards to examine various bits and pieces. Carson is a poet who relies on fragments: personal, classical (her specialty), and popular. She starts with a canvas of grief — in this case her mother's passing away -- and proceeds to build a collage, using spray paint, glue, wit, the occasional essay, quotes, and w
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Sep 15, 2010
Dawn
rated it: 
“The mad state is, as he emphasizes over and over again, empty. Teeming with emptiness. Knotted with emptiness. Immodest in its emptiness. You can pull emptiness out of it by the handful. “I am not here. I am not here and never will be.” You can pull it out endlessly. ”
Hello Anne. I read your book in the guesthouse. I got everything together to take over the world. I took over the world while reading. I slept it off and the world slept so very near me.
Flatman (1st draft) More...
Hello Anne. I read your book in the guesthouse. I got everything together to take over the world. I took over the world while reading. I slept it off and the world slept so very near me.
Flatman (1st draft) More...
Jul 29, 2010
jeff
rated it:
i disagree with sarah insofar as i quite enjoyed the essays. i need to look around and research carson's inclusion (or not) in seriously feminist discourse, since this book strikes me as an anthropological consideration of men as a wholly distinct species. fascinating and troubling and no doubt a work to be revisited.
Dec 08, 2008
Peter
rated it:
I say read but read means still thinking and still to pick it back up. Carson provokes me. Her "Idea of a University" rejuvenated my teaching of first-year writing and, I swear, it will help me teach "Multicultural America" the way that my students need it.
Jul 10, 2010
Satia
rated it: 
I hate it when poetry makes me feel stupid. I can't say I hated this book, however, because I can appreciate it on a technical level. For more:
http://satia.blogspot.com/2010/07/men-in...
http://satia.blogspot.com/2010/07/men-in...
Dec 03, 2008
Shelley
rated it:
anne carson is the nerdiest poet and warrants more praise
i need footnotes
i liked the poems about edward hopper paintings
i need footnotes
i liked the poems about edward hopper paintings
Jul 02, 2007
Andrew
rated it:
Anne Carson has a fantasticly new style that i've not seen before. I'm not a new reader of poetry, but i've been reading more 50's based poets (new critics, new york school, etc), and so turning to carson has been a treat. her treatment of classical works with very unclassical form is really something to read over and over.
it's always hard to rate. some of her longer poems here are a bit difficult, but that's what poetry is for, sometimes: to delve, delve.
it's always hard to rate. some of her longer poems here are a bit difficult, but that's what poetry is for, sometimes: to delve, delve.
May 09, 2011
Elizabeth
rated it:
I'm not going to lie: I don't understand 98% of this. This does not stop me from saying that it is beautiful. (I understand the essays on classics most, I think, and they are dense and thoughtful and intelligent.) The poetry is bewildering, evocative and free-wheeling. Anne Carson's mind must be an amazing place to live. It made fantastic bedtime reading, because I could read a few lines and lie in the dark and drift off, turning them over in my head.
Jul 01, 2010
Got this as a recommendation from a friend. Serendipitously, it has a portion dealing with Edward Hopper (literature inspired by Hopper is one of my pet projects). This raised my interest enough to read the book.
Not really my cup of tea as poetry goes (though my range is pretty limited). Carson obviously revels in her erudition, which normally I'd expect to dislike, but her writing does achieve occasionally surprising, even enjoyable effects.
Not really my cup of tea as poetry goes (though my range is pretty limited). Carson obviously revels in her erudition, which normally I'd expect to dislike, but her writing does achieve occasionally surprising, even enjoyable effects.
Oct 20, 2008
Kent
rated it:
As with every one of Carson's books, Men in the Off Hours has a careful construction, with the peak of the work coming in her "TV Men" poems. The selectivity film or television uses in telling a life is a fairly consistent trope for her, but with each use I still feel an intellectual freshness in it. My favorite thing to notice on this read is Lazarus, and the perspective a man might feel coming back from the dead.
Dec 16, 2009
Sarah
rated it:
I have no idea what is happening in this book . . . yet. . . .
I've now read it all, except for the ends of the essays because they were DEAD boring. Anne Carson, I do not care for your essays. They are boring. Please write more fake poems.
Anyway, three stars until I read it again--read it having researched Catallus, Hopper and Freud and having re-read Augustine's Confessions--and understand more.
I've now read it all, except for the ends of the essays because they were DEAD boring. Anne Carson, I do not care for your essays. They are boring. Please write more fake poems.
Anyway, three stars until I read it again--read it having researched Catallus, Hopper and Freud and having re-read Augustine's Confessions--and understand more.
Dec 07, 2009
Janet
rated it:
This is amazing, profound and memorable. I find myself emailing poems to friends. She is an alchemist of the most disparate elements, and although the result is mysterious and never finite, never known, it nevertheless hits you with tremendous power. Reading these poems is like watching a great sleight of hand magician--no matter how close you sit, you still can't tell how it's done.
Dec 16, 2009
Niina
rated it: 
Like Glass, Irony, and God, this had its startling moments. Carson writes with a certain kind of scholarly, detached clarity that nevertheless still comes close to the sublime, especially in its hypersensory use of imagery, once in awhile. But when it remains detached, it remains noticeably detached. Worth reading, though.
May 31, 2008
cindy
rated it:
My favorite thing to do with Anne Carson, and especially this book, is to pick it up and randomly choose a stanza, she's good like that... "silver milk/is filling the space/gets caught in the mist/twists all his bones to the outside where they ignite in the air"
Aug 24, 2010
Ekaterina
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Great so far. Anne Carson fails to disappoint me. Every. Single. Time.
Sep 09, 2007
Jennifer
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Absolutely seductive combinations: how men and women differ in perspectives of time and war, integration of cinema and literature, characters (real and imagined) interacting with each other from various historical epochs.
Dec 16, 2009
Katie
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the conversation between virginia wolff and thucydides and the essay on female pollution in ancient greek culture made this book for me more than the straight poetry. but that conversation really makes it: lovely lovely lovely.
Jan 05, 2008
Jenny
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For anyone who spends way too much time fretting about such things, check out her poem that begins...
ESSAY ON WHAT I THINK ABOUT MOST
Error.
And its emotions.
ESSAY ON WHAT I THINK ABOUT MOST
Error.
And its emotions.
Jul 16, 2011
kirk
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three stars, but the "Essay on What I Think About Most" contained herein has been for me one of the most important poems I've read.
May 14, 2008
henry
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pretty good, but i'm still looking for a book of hers that compares to "Glass, Irony, and God", and this ain't it.
Apr 23, 2008
Terry
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A virtuosic book of poetry collage from one of our most prominent classicists.
Jul 12, 2007
Jacqueline
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quite amazing. contains one of my top ten favorite poems ever. page 47
Feb 11, 2012
Feb 08, 2012
