Men in the Off Hours (eBook)

Synopsis

Following her widely acclaimed "Autobiography of Red" ("a spellbinding achievement" - Susan Sontag), here comes a new collection of poetry and prose that displays Anne Carson's intoxicating mixture of opposites - the classic and the modern, cinema and print, narrative and verse. In "Men in the Off Hours", Carson re-invents 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" is profound, provocative and unforgettable. "The most exciting poet writing in English today". (Michael Ondaatje). "Her work is full of moments of startling originality and beauty. If she was a prose writer, she would be instantly recognised as a genius". (Colm Toibin). ""Autobiography of Red" follows closely on her collection Glass and God and is at least as memorable a single magnificent and perplexing poem, in long, pulsing, Whitmanesque lines". (Karl Miller).