Anne Carson

Men in the Off Hours

Anne Carson

• 2001 Griffin Canadian winner
• 2000 LATimes–Poetry finalist
• 2000 NBCC–Poetry finalist
• Score: 22.51

Following her widely acclaimed Autobiography of Red (“A spellbinding achievement” —Susan Sontag), a new collection of poetry and prose that displays Anne Carson’s signature mixture of opposites—the classic and the modern, cinema and print, narrative and verse.

In Men in the Off Hours, Carson reinvents figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, and Audubon. She views the writings of Sappho, St. Augustine, and Catullus through a modern lens. She sets up startling juxtapositions (Lazarus among video paraphernalia; Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war). And in a final prose poem, she meditates on the recent death of her mother.

With its quiet, acute spirituality, its fearless wit and sensuality, and its joyful understanding that “the fact of the matter for humans is imperfection,” Men in the Off Hours shows us “the most exciting poet writing in English today” (Michael Ondaatje) at her best.

The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos

Anne Carson

• 2001 LATimes–Poetry winner
• Score: 10.51

The Beauty Of The Husband is an essay on Keats’s idea that beauty is truth, and is also the story of a marriage. It is told in 29 tangos. A tango (like a marriage) is something you have to dance to the end.

This clear-eyed, brutal, moving, darkly funny book tells a single story in an immediate, accessible voice–29 “tangos” of narrative verse that take us vividly through erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a long-time marriage that falls apart. Only award-winning poet Anne Carson could create a work that takes on the oldest of lyrical subjects—love—and make it this powerful, this fresh, this devastating.

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse

Anne Carson

• 1998 NBCC–Poetry finalist
• Score: 6.48

In her first novel in verse, Anne Carson bridges the gap between classicism and the modern, poetry and prose, with a volcanic journey into the soul of a winged red monster named Geryon.

There is a strong mixture of whimsy and sadness in Geryon’s story. He is tormented as a boy by his brother, escapes to a parallel world of photography, and falls in love with Herakles—a golden young man who leaves Geryon at the peak of infatuation. Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, until that glass house is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by Herakles’ return. Running throughout is Geryon’s fascination with his wings, the color red, and the fantastic accident of who he is.

Autobiography of Red is a deceptively simple narrative layered with currents of meaning, emotion, and the truth about what it’s like to be red. It is a powerful and unsettling story that moves, disturbs, and delights.