From Anne Carson, the award-winning Canadian author of Autobiography of Red, comes a landmark collection that stretches the boundaries of genre, pressing the traditional form of the essay into new service. In succinct and astonishingly beautiful prose and verse, Anne Carson exposes the fragile differences between "I" and "you," and between the modern and the classical, in a voice that shatters convention with its integrity and clarity. Carson envisions a present-day interview with a 7th- century BC poet; lectures on subjects as diverse as hedonism and Ovid; imagines a 15th-century painter's muse at a phenomenology conference in Italy; and in the final section presents a poetic travelogue of a woman's life that beautifully contemplates the difference between the sexes. Plainwater is a stunning collection. About the Author: Anne Carson lives in Montreal where she is the Director of Graduate Studies, Classics, at McGill University. She is the recipient of many awards, including the QSPELL A.M. Klein Poetry Prize, the 1996 Lannan Award and the 1997 Pushcart Prize. Her most recent book, Autobiography of Red, was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. |
