Men in the Off Hours Quotes

“In myth, women's boundaries are pliant, porous, mutable. Her power to control them is inadequate, her concern for them unreliable. Deformation attends her. She swells, she shrinks, she leaks, she is penetrated, she suffers metamorphoses. The women of mythology regularly lose their form in monstrosity.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“Nighthawks

I wanted to run away with you tonight
but you are a difficult woman
the rules of you -

Past and future circle round us
now we know more now less
in the institute of shadows.

On a street black as widows
with nothing to confess
our distances found us

the rules of you -
so difficult a woman
I wanted to run away with you tonight.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“After all why study the past? Because you may wish to repeat it.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“As tree shapes from mist / Her young death / Loose / In you.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“There is something you should know.
And the right way to know it
is by a cherrying of your mind.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“What is a Lamb of God? People use this phrase.
I don't know.
I watch my sister, fingers straying absently about her mustache,
no help there.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“détails

All the same there are some small questions one would like to put to Sokrates. Or better still Sappho. Avec tes mains brûlées.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

“Campaign Against Akhmatova Begins (1922)

She ran from lamppost to lamppost, the wind slammed.
Trotsky reviewed her in Pravda: One reads with dismay...
and an unofficial Communist Party resolution banned her poetry (1925).
She didn't notice, didn't know what a Communist Party was in those days.
Fog choked the city.
Russia's great poets were all about 35 years ol
Scraggly trees wandered by the canal in dim sun.”
― Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours