Plainwater: Essays and Poetry by Anne Carson

Plainwater: Essays and Poetry Reviews

• 
  Ken

  When you enjoy a new-to-you author this much, you just hope you haven't made the mistake of choosing her best book to read first. And though Plainwater is a flavorful mix of essays and poetry, it really amounts to poetry, whether in traditional lines and stanzas or hidden in paragraph form. The lady has a word with ways, as they say.
  
  The book opens modestly enough with "Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings," which is an interview between the author and a 7th-century B.C. poet (but of course!). The moral of the story? If you like an ancient poet, make like a ventriloquist and give him a new voice.
  
  After this comes "Short Talks," the perfect thing for these short-attention-span times. Most of these entries are a mere paragraph long, with titles like "On Trout," "On Disappointments in Music," "On Ovid," "On Parmenides," "On Waterproofing," "On the Mona Lisa," "On Sylvia Plath," and "On Reading." Sweet and short, the shortest of the lot is "On Gertrude Stein About 9:30," which goes like so: "How curious. I had no idea! Today has ended."
  
  Section 3, "Canicula di Anna," is full-fledged poetry--44 pages of a phenomenology conference in Perugia, Italy. If you have no idea what phenomenology is and how on earth (much less Italy) it would merit a conference, know that it is, according to both Merriam and Webster, "the study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a preface to or a part of philosophy."
  
  As they say in Canada: "Oh."
  
  "The Life of Towns," Part 4, is similar to "Short Talks" except it is written as short poems. The beyond-curious thing about these guys is that every line in every poem starts with a capital letter and ends with a period--even when it's not a sentence. Exhibit B ("A" being busy):
  
  "Luck Town" by Anne Carson
  
  Digging a hole.
  To bury his child alive.
  So that he could buy food for his aged mother.
  One day.
  A man struck gold.
  
  Once you get used to the quirky periods (that must be ignored) and to the fact that Carson has forced you to slow down and read her poems slowly, you're safe at the plate.
  
  Finally, the book wraps up with a travelogue of sorts called "The Anthropology of Water." It's about Anne and a boyfriend doing the Simon & Garfunkel thing ("Yes, we've all gone to look for America..."). It's like snooping in a poet's diary, this section, and you not only get an idea about camping (of all things), but learn about the psychology of man and woman in close quarters (pup tents, sleeping bags, cars, etc.) and the communion one feels with nature, even under times of stress.
  
  My favorite line in this section, running away (like the dish and spoon)? Easy. It's two lines under the heading Friday 4:00 a.m. Not swimming.: "Staring. The lake lies like a silver tongue in a black mouth."
  
  Let me stare at that line again. If it's 4 a.m. as I do so, even better. And if I'm in a cabin right on a lake, better still. Deep inhale. Slow exhale.
  
  Throughout all of these sections, Carson explores her fraught relationship with her father. Yep. He's another one of those strict, man-of-few-words types who bears a daughter-of-many-words and has trouble showing his love.
  
  What is it with men who have trouble showing their love? In its way, the theme of this lovely book.
• 
  saïd

  I want to crawl inside her brain and live there for a while
• 
  Jimmy

  12.26.02 – Notice of Termination of Lease
  (from my landlord)
  
  Due to my financial situation, I regret to inform you that I am forced to sell the house you are living in now. This letter serves as your 30 day notice. Please move out completely by January 31, 2003.
  
  12.31.02 – The Year of the Horse
  
  I’m holding on to a new book. It is white like a small hand opening. Like the new year drifting its white-out over the frozen grass. The pages are stiff, each being convinced to turn over. It is learning the mechanism of its own flipping. Pressing its ear to the spine, it listens for clicks.
  
  Across the table, Dawn declares 2003 the year of the horse. How can horses sleep standing up? I think of a precise machine fitting for a horse. A white horse in the snow, breathing out dense clouds. A spotted horse drinking from the edge of a lake. A black horse walking away in the desert. The shape of a horse is indefinite, as any body of water will tell you. You fall through and through. The year of the horse.
  
  Is it?
  
  01.11.03 - Interview with Anne Carson
  
  I: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed Ms. Carson. In your book, Plainwater, I understand you have included some fragments of Mimnermos' poetry. What is the importance of understanding these, and why did you choose to open the book with this disjunctive series?
  
  A: Please call me Annie.
  
  I: Alright Annie. Are you tired of these questions already?
  
  A: I'm tired of Freud. I bet you're tired of Aphrodite. You're probably tired of me, and you haven't even gotten to the good part of the book yet.
  
  I: Yes, but the crust is good dipped in chicken soup.
  
  D: Motherfucker, give me some of that.
  
  I: Dawn? Where did Annie go?
  
  D: I don't know man. Hand it over.
  
  I: Dude, you were Annie... I mean, you were Miss Anne Carson just ten seconds ago, I swear. Am I dreaming?
  
  D: I'm tired of Freud. You wouldn't believe what my Queer Theory professor said today.
  
  I: I don't want to know. I was doing an interview. I guess I'll ask you my next question: What's the function of beauty in art?
  
  D: Well, a pretty girl is good to look at. And I guess you need that in art because art needs to be good to look at, too.
  
  A: There's probably more wisdom in there than you think.
  
  I: Annie? Is that you?
  
  D: No. Hey, did you read that Plainwater book? I thought we were gonna talk about it.
  
  I: Yeah, I just finished this section with interviews and shit.
  
  A: Can a butterfly ever be beautiful? What the butterfly does not understand is her own reflection in the pond. She folds her wings behind her as she lands, forming each past movement in reverse. In my imagination, I am so sure that the water in Kolophon is always cold. I'd like to pull up my dress and step in, but I'm scared. I don't know why. This is always when I grow older. Perhaps this fear is related to my sister's drowning. I see her face in the water at night. Does that answer your question, Dr. Moss?
  
  I: Who's Doctor Moss?
  
  01.16.03 – Properties of Glass
  
  An empty house is indefinite as a horse. It is an echo chamber, born to convince us of ourselves. As I was saying that, I was distracted. I was withdrawing into boxes that will later be unboxed. It is easy to be distracted by random objects on the walls. The bedside table spilling over with books and coffee mugs.
  
  A pilgrimage is a disguise for a spiritual journey to find the self. The destination is not as important as the physical act of moving through space. Waking up in a lake after a dream of drought.
  
  But this is no pilgrimage. No. Not like that at all. This is not about moving through spaces. It is about walls and windows. How many windows do I need? When I was 12, I heard rumors that there was a house being built entirely of glass. Is that a house without walls or a house without windows? I wanted so much to live there, but I didn’t know why.
  
  How can a horse sleep standing up? It is its own house.
  
  01.18.03 - Theory of Adjectives
  
  How many degrees of separation between Pina Bausch and this cup of tea? Anne takes a sip from it. She's fixed to the pages curled in her left hand. Outside, the smell of burnt garbage tumbles upwards. It's late August, and the mockingbirds are swooping down like wild fire at your ear. In every story, something always represents love. Or someone.
  
  Anne turns another page. This one's riddled with disease, slow infinitives. Prepositional phrases. In a month, the streets will freeze. It takes a dead body 23 minutes to reach room temperature. Patches of ice form continents. Her apartment's small. So small, pacing becomes necessary. There are pictures of Ophelia on the wall next to polaroids of her mother in a blue scarf. Poems scattered on her floor like seed. Buddha says I, too, use concepts, but I am not fooled thereby. Anne writes a sentence in the margin that resembles a woman whose back has given out.
  
  01.19.03 - Exegesis
  
  Is that all we must go on? I can tell you that there is a curiosity in the mosquito's stirring, the phenomenologists counter-stirring. Between these, an ancient dialectic, perhaps? Some air thrown out between two soft sheets? A city inside a stone? The overheard words: I'm not sure I overheard them anymore. The first time I met Anna, she was caught between these gravities. One was painting her with vermillion, the scorpion's scald. The other was an overheard conversation, a long distance call, her father's death. She showed me the blue veins mapping both her arms. As if scars.
  
  I can tell you how to keep the dogs out, their barking barking. But not what the barking means. What I'm trying to say is. The scars, let's go back to the scars. I mean, veins. Like frescoes, graffiti on the tombs of the Museo Archeologico. Powdered lead, cypress resin, a careful science. I mean, silence. Carson's use of white space, adjectives, no. Her use of. Invention? No, her freedom from convention. No.
  
  The first time I met Anna, she was furiously dancing. I don't remember much else. Maybe she showed me her arms, maybe not. Maybe I overheard murderer. Heidegger? A man was sitting next to me, covered in a shawl. No, a Yankees cap. When he reached for his drink, I saw on his fingers the ground up leaves, black manganate, tint of flesh.
  
  01.21.03 - Interview with Jimmy Lo
  
  A: Thanks for agreeing to interview with me Mr. Lo. About your review of my book...
  
  J: Yes. Umm.. Well, that's a touchy subject, isn't it? Maybe you shouldn't have been the one doing this interview. I mean, I'm still in the middle of writing it, and there's that whole ethical thing...
  
  A: You think I'm going to influence your opinion of my book?
  
  J: Well, if we start talking more often, you know, go out on a few dates and stuff, things could get out of hand. I need to remain objective about this.
  
  A: Our relationship is strictly professional.
  
  J: Yes, yes I'll try.
  
  A: Tell me about Dawn.
  
  J: Dawn?
  
  A: Yes, this person was not in my book. Yet you've confused her with me during the second section of your review.
  
  J: She's not? I thought she... Oh, well maybe I just made her up.
  
  A: You're a real asshole, you know?
  
  J: Sorry.
  
  01.22.03
  Apt. J10 Ansley Forest, Monroe Dr.
  
  Patricia, 21, has two dogs, frequent guests, and smokes indoors in winter. I know this, but I'm here anyway. She opens the door, smiling. She works at a pet care place down the street. Her boyfriend is on the couch. Nice location, I say. The room is bare. Take a seat. The TV sits on a stack of Yellow Pages. One of the dogs is a baby pit bull. My dad used to own a pit bull, I say. We gave him away cause he got too aggressive. The kitchen's loaded with unwashed dishes. Her boyfriend asks if I want to smoke pot. We watch commercials. So, what do you do? I work for a design firm. I do web pages. Stains on the carpet. You don't go to school? I graduated. From Tech. Computer Science. Oh, cool, that's what he's doing too. Bauder College. Jeopardy on TV. One of the dogs really likes me. I think her name is Lucy. I better go. I'll let you know soon. OK, Aufwiedersehen. You know German? Yeah, we lived in Germany for a while. Hey, do you know a German word that sounds like "function lust". It means something like "joy in doing"...
  
  01.23.03
  453 Curran Street
  
  A student lives here. Her room smells of perfume and has blue walls (imagine sleeping in a small red boat in the center of a lake). Windows hang on the wall like upside down roses. The landlord walks beside me. He talks about central heat and air. The ceiling is warped where a brown stain shows through. That was from a leak, he says. but we fixed it.
  
  Imagine sleeping in a boat while the lake drains into a red bucket.
  
  01.25.03 - Funktionslust
  
  Sometimes I go because of the voice. 1 bedroom. Washer/dryer. Sometimes I draw out the person before we even meet. It doesn't matter who they are. What they do. I enjoy passing through. Monte del Gozo. Another exit off the highway, another town with a strange name. I look at their pictures. Try to guess what led up to each photo... the wife in her swimming cap, the sister standing out on the dock. I read the titles of their books. Wuthering Heights. The Waves. Breathe the potpourri in their bathrooms. Today, while looking out a bedroom window saying "Nice view", I wondered about the view from her room. I still can't picture it clearly. Where exactly, the window? I thought next to her pictures of Ophelia, but now I'm not so sure. What angle does the sun slant through the blinds at 10am?
  
  Continued in the comments section...
  
• 
  Frances King

  i don’t know how to explain the experience of reading this book except to say that it left me with a ringing sense of loneliness. not the numbing sort of loneliness. just the loneliness you experience as a child. like the feeling of standing on the edge of a great big mountain, looking out over a world and landscape that you do not know and that you fear you will never truly know. you are so small and the trees are especially big, and even the dog you pass on the street is just about your size. now i’m not sure if I really felt lonely as a kid. was I aware of the fact that I was standing on the edge of a great big mountain? looking out over a world that I cannot absorb? that is just out of my grasp? did I ever once think, “wow, I am especially small in size, and the moon is just two feet wide. and the sun is too. the moon is the size of my dog, if not smaller, but one day I might grow to learn that the moon is in fact way bigger than the dog who licks my face”. I don’t know! but I can feel the childhood loneliness when I read Anne Carson. but I’m not standing at the edge of the great big mountain. I’m sitting! with my legs dangling off the side. and once again I can feel my legs loose and swinging below me, a feeling I only now get when sitting on a very tall stool. and I’m looking up at the moon while sitting on the edge of this great big mountain, and a glass of water is sitting next to me, and so is my horse, who is also just a kid
• 
  Margaret

  Anne Carson puts together several different prose and poetry styles all together to create something beautiful and amazing. It took me a while to adapt to poetry again after a bit of a hiatus, but Plainwater is so good I've started back into a poetry binge of proportions not seen in recent years. It's amazing and lovely and everyone should go read it.
• 
  Alexandra

  My first encounter with Carson--completely life-changing.
• 
  Laurie Neighbors

  This book is one big old hunk of gorgeous.
• 
  Aslı Can

  she is such a powerful, such a crazy and such a wise woman who asks undeniable questions:
  
  
  what unaccountable longings and hidden fears are swimming on fire in you?
  
  <3
• 
  Eilidh Fyfe

  beautiful anne!! off to cry for a week ❤️ thank u so much kate xxxxxxxx
• 
  Tessa

  Carson + Homer-adjacent lyric poets = unwilting glory. I adore her translations of Mimnermos and am immoderately grateful for her structural analyses. Makes my heart dizzy! I think I don't love philosophy enough to always truly understand her other poetry, but I sure did enjoy having it in my brain. I always like the way she writes about love, it leaves me with a residue of head-sadness and heart-fear. Her writing always feels multimedia. Not the most exceptional phrase in the book but one that I keep remembering: "I was a young, strong, stingy person of no particular gender - all traits advantageous to the pilgrim." I like how her gender isn't consistent between autobiographical pieces. I believe she defines womanhood as the struggle to please men in the hope of no longer living in terror of them. As soon as lockdown ends I'm taking a 47 day backpacking trip with only socks, pencils, and three empty notebooks. I'll stick flowers in my pockets every day until they're overflowing with dried leaves. Well enlightenment is useless but "since my house burned down / I now own / a better view / of the rising moon". Carson didn't write that, she quoted it, but it's excellent. I'm going to finish my dissertation one summer while on a transnational road trip with someone also finishing a dissertation, someone who I love and will always live far away from me. Everything Carson writes is a conversation, explicit or implicit. She becomes entangled! That is why I love her, because of the entanglings.
  My only but constant criticism is that she never uses the Oxford comma and it drives me bonkers, always just THIS close to perfection.
• 
  Bryant

  Anne Carson is the Arachne of contemporary poets. A professor of classics and comparative literature at Michigan, Carson has an eight-legged brain that comfortably weaves sixth-century Greek lyric poetry, Renaissance painting, ancient Chinese wisdom literature, Kafka, and the confusion of her (writerly persona's) own love affairs. It is tempting to read the sections of this collection as separate entities. Indeed, the thematic and stylistic differences seem to encourage episodic reading. But such sporadic engagement runs counter to the flow of the titular plainwater. Carson's gift brings together the disparate and disjunctive as she sets down a variegated set of rocks in the same, illuminating stream.
• 
  Michael

  i think i had to read "autobiography of red" and "beauty of the husband" to get to trust her enough to go through these shorter, sharper pieces, but this is my favorite anne carson so far. by "trust her," i mean understand that she's lying most of the time, but it's for my own good. i would love to learn to move through truth towards beauty the way she does. unfortunately i'm pretty much convinced that it's not something you can learn.
• 
  Bri

  Loved it. I'm not going to pretend I have a complete grasp on the complexities of this collection yet (I feel like I need to spend years studying history, anthropology, mythology, language) but Anne Carson writes beautifully. Creative, clean. Her words find hollows in me and echo. My copy is littered with post its to mark certain lines, passages. Not a review, but a more personal (?) take
  here.
• 
  Dorotea

  … It’s been 15 days since I finished this book and yet I don’t have the words to express how I feel towards this. The Anthropology of Water was extraordinary. The Brainsex Paintings were a great reminder of the time I used to study ancient Greek (and I might pick up the original Greek ones and perhaps comeback to Carson’s essay once more, hence why I’ll put this in my to-re-read list).
  
  But seriously, the Anthropology of Water was even more than extraordinary.
• 
  Marc Nash

  Video Review
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4JWq...
• 
  Júlia

  Bueno, fue más o menos hace un año, nos hicimos amantes y lo único que quería era que cesara la atracción. Atracción atracción atracción. Me atraían los brazos. Me atraían los ojos. Me atraían los pulmones. Me atraía el sudor en los muslos. Me atraía de noche, me atraía todo el día, atrayéndome sin dejarme caer, sin quemar, sin importar. ¿Qué importa la atracción? «Es sólo amor», solía decir, riéndose, abriéndome la ropa. Llamaba a nuestros cuerpos «este lujo». «Ningún lujo es eterno», le respondía yo, y él replicaba «eso está bien, no tenemos mucho tiempo». El amor le hacía tan feliz que empecé a llamarle el emperador de China. Había lugares donde el lujo disminuía, donde yo esperaba. Vi algo abrirse en un destello y luego lo perdí.
• 
  Haley Connolly

  emerging from anne carson's writing always feels like stepping out of a fog. god fucking knows if i'll ever be able to articulately review something of hers, but her brain is unreal
  
  no rating because i definitely need to sit with and revisit parts of this
• 
  Mark

  I really did not enjoy this book as a whole. A few parts I did enjoy but they were sparse. The contents are a varied lot to say the least. Even the last part "The Anthropology of Water," which is over half of the book consists of 7 different, highly varied, pieces.
  
  The piece I enjoyed the most was "Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela" from "The Anthropology of Water." It is not an essay but a series of journal entries by someone on the pilgrimage to Compostela and has a lot of interesting thoughts on pilgrims.
  
  "Pilgrims were people who figured things out as they walked. On the road you can think forward, you can think back, you can make a list to remember to tell those at home."
  
  "Pilgrims were people who took a surprisingly long time to cross the head of a pin."
  
  "Pilgrims were people who carried little. They carried it balanced on their heart."
  
  But my definite favorite due to its resonance for my own life is: "It is an open secret among pilgrims and other theoreticians of this traveling life that you become addicted to the horizon."
  
  I think Miss E would really like this section (read pp. 117-187).
  
• 
  Dawn

  Classic and Capital. In the sense that it's the one that I read first. It's also the one I taught my students and the one they came in to talk about and they write like and the one that we were all reading when my cat died. That passage about Anna. And also the one with the blood oranges. What a comfort an essay is. Who would have known. Also it is the one I bought god so so long ago and it is ruined because I've read it that many times and others have also gotten their hands on it and I found a first edition at the library sale and it's great it's okay, it sort of stands in.
• 
  Alexander

  I first found "Kinds of Water", included in this collection, several years before the book appeared and I read it again and again for a decade. It might be the single biggest influence on my writing.
• 
  gwa

  eran cuatro estrellas hasta que llegó la parte de compostela y me rompió el corazón!
• 
  sab ◡̈

  “we live by waters breaking out of the heart.”
  
  i really liked some parts, but, as a whole, i didn't enjoy it as much as i thought i would.
• 
  Sentimental Surrealist

  I have to confess, Carson almost lost me with this one. Or at least she came as close to losing me as she has thus far, because parts one and two (which we’ll discuss) were both incredible, and this books last hundred fifty pages are probably the most moving and most original stretch of Anne Carson that I’ve ever read. None of these, let me assure you, are the problem. The problem is “Canicula di Anna,” sits on the same poetic-scholarly faultline as Autobiography of Red. Obviously, Red is a wonderful book, but Red is infused with a lyricism that I find just plain missing here. “Canicula” is too laden with biography and backstory, and for me, the language just doesn’t have that same ring to it. It reads like an essay, and a rather dry essay at that, with funny line breaks. Which, I mean, this is the risk Anne Carson always ran, and it’s a risk that often pays off for her. Carson is a high roller when it comes to formal gambits, and mostly, she reaps the rewards of this. Not so much here.
  
  Ah well. Nobody’s body of work is entirely faultless, you know? And I’d like to emphasize that this solid four-star, in places five-star, work is the weakest Carson book I’ve read thus far. That speaks volumes about how good she is. The rest of this work takes Carson to new territory, which I think we all expect by now. Parts two and four, respectively an essay suite entitled “Small Talks” and a poem cycle called “The Life of Towns,” function as iridescent bursts of consciousness, both gorgeously written, both sharp in their insights. The latter will inevitably invite comparisons to Calvino, but Carson’s sharp and unsentimental imagery (we get a “tinkle of the moon” in the mix) stakes out its own territory.
  
  Part one, “Mimnermos: the Brainsex Paintings,” is probably Carson as she’s best-known to the public. The classical scholar in her comes all the way out, presenting fragments, whether authentic or fabricated, of the ancient Greek poet Mimnermos. Things really get interesting when she dredges the persona up for an interview. It’s got as much to say about the topics of memory, desire, and the pain we all try to keep hidden as The Autobiography of Red, and as an added bonus, it throws in about the near-constant war between creation and creator, persona and public. But it’s more than poetry about poetry, it’s how we as humans exist within this world we must exist in. It is, in short, the sort of daring and original genre-bending work I love to read.
  
  Now, about “The Anthropology of Water,” which closes things off. This extended piece is in turn anchored by two longer essays, “Kinds of Water” and “Just for a Thrill,” both of which recreate two different - yet, of course, quite similar - westward trips, which pair the speaker with two separate men, or maybe one man. The former leverages the imagery of devotion and sainthood, while the latter is a swirl of classic Western imagery, R&B lyrics, a crumbling relationship, and the nature of wisdom. All angles through which Carson’s speaker interrogates and dialogues with a perhaps- (ok, definitely-) doomed romance. It’s the sort of masterpiece only Carson could’ve written. She sets the scene with a little Greek myth (this is what happened to the daughter who didn’t kill her suitor, long story short), then paints a vivid and truly wrenching family scene, and closes off with another.
  
  What it all adds up to, as far as I can tell, is how this all sticks around, what and why people internalize. The men are granted heavy titles - “My Cid,” “The Emperor” - but the deeper I got into the poem, the more ironic these titles seemed, these men with their petty need for control and their refusals to listen constantly undermining and betraying them, while also harming those around him. As with the father in the second part, as with the brother in the fourth. It’s a wonderful feminist text, and it also gets at this notion of centers not holding, the myths of the West and the pilgrims and the virtuous father and the good Emperor and the heroic El Cid not quite standing up to the scrutiny presented them. Which in a sense is Carson’s project, here’s the front of the myth and here’s how it actually goes down… it’s no accident that one of her best books is called Men in the Off Hours.
  
  Plus, the aesthetics are just wonderful. Carson calls in these choruses about pilgrims throughout “Kinds of Water” and sprinkles in lines from classic blues and jazz singers (Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, and Etta James are among the greats inattendance) all over “Just for a Thrill.” I find they have a particularly powerful double-effect in the latter, creating a sense of physicality and temporality while also providing a framework for the events themselves. Each asks a question of the scene, and few are quite as straightforward as they appear. Meanwhile, the pilgrim bits, which close off many of “Kinds of Water’s” fragments, provide all sorts of shading to what we’ve read, in many cases adding an extra layer or two to the fragment.
  
  I guess what I’m saying is that an incredible amount of craft went into this piece, a lot of care, layers upon layers, allusions upon allusions. The end result is downright transformative, a staggering testament to what literature and only literature can do, the interior and exterior worlds it can create and complicate. This is a book I’m already itching to reread. Even with the dud straight in the middle, this book still makes quite the landing indeed.
  
• 
  S̶e̶a̶n̶

  Infinite stars light this dim scar of a path we travel. All of us repeat ourselves. Anne Carson uses the word 'ghostily' twice in this book. She talks twice about how you can 'feel the difference run down the back of your skull like cold water.' In her imagined interviews with Mimnermos she does not use ending punctuation. Her lack of question marks thrilled me. She mentions Kafka a lot. We're all threading our way along the scar and the stars are exploding overhead, raining down silver upon our heads. I read most of this book outside and never saw a single star. But it was the middle of the day. And I was surrounded by water. There is a lot of water in this book. There is a lot of water on the earth. And in our bodies. And yet, as Carson says, 'we think we live by keeping water caught in the trap of the heart.' A dry heart terrifies us. We think of the heart as an oasis in the middle of our deserted bodies. But it might not be that, not for all of us, at least. Anne Carson traces the scar, prods at the heart, wrings it for its water, drags it dripping across the pages. It's hers to do this with, but it could just as easily be any of ours.
• 
  Amal

  "what is the fear inside language? no accident of the body can make it stop burning" "it is a strange economy that shame sets up, isn't it? almost as strange as that of honor" god i love anne carson, i love that if this was any other writer i would find it unnecessarily pretentious but as i was saying to jay the fact is that she is just so far disattached from convention and the public eye that it becomes wondrous again. does that make sense. anyway what she does with metaphor/simile is remarkable "moon like a piece of skin" "take two-measure words and press them together like lips of a wound" "as nail is parted from the flesh, i awoke and i was alone" ALSO in the anthropology of water i am obsessed with how like... she connects the everyday realities of Womanhood Is An Inescapable Prison with these huge, literary landscapes of truth... the references to lachine, quebec in the setting headings and "standing there he dried each pot. and said. turning. 'i like this dress.' (why?) 'because there are so many ways to take it off.' [...] what makes life life and not a simple story? jagged bits moving never still, all along the wall." GOD i love her
• 
  Amy Layton

  As many of you probably know by now, I love Anne Carson!!!  She's so innovative, fresh, breath-taking, and insightful.  Her poems and essays are just so incredible and help me to see things in a new light.  Plainwater takes some poetry and some essays in the form of diary entries, similes, and locations.  It's just all so stunning, and she seems to do it flawlessly.  
  
  This is definitely a collection I need to reread five, ten years down the line to see how it resonates with me then, to see how much I've learned, how far I've come.  Her writing is always complex, layered, and multi-faceted in ways that almost seem to require the reading of her writing over and over--not because her writing is complicated, but because it is just so deep and involved that there'll always be something new and fresh to come back to.
  
  Review cross-listed
  here!
• 
  Ross

  Anne Carson composes a stretto of Japanese and Greek poets, Renaissance painters, Chinese courtesans, Spanish nobleman and German authors in Plainwater. As usual, it's difficult to describe the esoteric legerdemain she can conjure, but a few examples reside in this collection: imbuing Mimnermus with magical anachronism; the dissection of a personal relationship juxtaposed with Zen poetry and ancient Chinese anecdotes about emperors and concubines; and poetic homilies that stir the mind and the heart. What is most remarkable to me about Anne Carson will always be her ability to layer metaphors, fuguelike, throughout her work. Like other great artists, her output builds atop itself, not just across a single collection, but throughout a career, creating a body of work that is truly unique.
• 
  Abby

  “I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.”

  
  
  Always and forever in the mood for Anne Carson. I can never get enough of her free-wheeling mind and her absolute independence as a writer and thinker. This is a multifaceted collection, featuring a long poem, short “talks,” and travel diaries with lovers, among other things. It does not disappoint.
• 
  Leopoldo

  Entiendo por qué los que saben dicen que Anne Carson es una de las más extraordinarias poetas vivas del mundo. La canadiense sabe cómo resumir en menos de trescientas páginas una cantidad extraordinaria de obsesiones y manías: la antigüedad clásica (es traductora de Safo, por ejemplo), la muerte, el viaje, los límites del lenguaje y la versificación, del ritmo de la poesía en lengua inglesa, el ensayo como forma poética.
  
  Esta es mi primera lectura de muchas en mi proyecto de leer escritores que han sonado fuerte para el próximo Nobel 2019. Si Carson lo gana, será a pulso.
• 
  musa b-n

  I loved this book! I originally got it because I wanted to read "Anthropology of Water" (the final section of this book), but each section was so good. In my opinion, each section got progressively better, and "Anthropology" was the best. It took me a while because it's definitely not very clear writing and I have a short attention span, but it was really good to read, with some powerful parts.