Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera - Softcover

Carson, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400078903 ISBN 13: 9781400078905

Publisher: Vintage, 2006

Synopsis

"One of the most interesting gatherings of material that any poet has published within living memory." --The Economist

Simone Weil described “decreation” as “undoing the creature in us” -- an undoing of self. In her first collection in five years, Anne Carson explores this idea with characteristic brilliance and a tantalizing range of reference, moving from Aphrodite to Antonioni, Demosthenes to Annie Dillard, Telemachos to Trotsky, and writing in forms as varied as opera libretto, screenplay, poem, oratorio, essay, shot list, and rapture. As she makes her way through these forms she slowly dismantles them, and in doing so seeks to move through the self, to its undoing.

"Cool, resolute, smart, and lovely.... Carson has emerged in the last two decades as a kind of prophet of the unknowable." --The Village Voice 

About this title

About the Author:

ANNE CARSON was born in Canada and has been a professor of Classics for over thirty years. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Outwardly His Life Ran SmoothlyComparative figures: 1784 Kant owned 55 books, Goethe 2300, Herder 7700.Windows: Kant had one bedroom window, which he kept shut at all times, toforestall insects. The windows of his study faced the garden, on the the other side ofwhich was the city jail. In summer loud choral singing of the inmates wafted in.Kant asked that the singing be done sotto voce and with windows closed. Kant hadfriends at city hall and got his wish.Tolstoy: Tolstoy thought that if Kant had not smoked so much tobacco TheCritique of Pure Reason would have been written in language you could under-stand (in fact he smoked one pipe at 5 AM).Numbering: Kant never ate dinner alone, it exhausts the spirit. Dinner guests, inthe opinion of the day, should not number more than the Muses nor less than theGraces. Kant set six places.Sensualism: Kant's favourite dinner was codfish.Rule Your Nature: Kant breathed only through his nose.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1400078903
• ISBN 13: 9781400078905
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272