Beware the Man Whose Handwriting Sways Like a Reed in the Wind

Reviews

"Anne Carson’s is among the most inventive, astringent sensibilities in modern letters." — George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement

"Her shape-shifting powers are epic." — Vanity Fair

"Anne Carson applies the habits of classical scholarship, the linguistic rigor, the relentless search for evidence, the jigsaw approach to scattered facts, to the trivia of contemporary life." — Sam Anderson, The New York Times Magazine

"Her work is full of moments of startling originality and beauty." — Colm Tóibín

"She is an inspiration to us all. She is that rarest of entities, a writer as fearless as she is gifted." — Michael Cunningham

"For all Carson’s extensive reading, her best work has a pared-to-the-bone simplicity. Desire and fear. Eros and loss. That glare again." — Tristam Fane Saunders, Times Literary Supplement

"She has mind-boggling range and formal audacity, the power to bring out the poemhood in any prose genre and to complicate the poemhood of poems. She mixes everything together in a casual defiance suggesting literature is always and never true, an art of fact. She translates meaning not just across language but across gapes of time, making ancient texts sound just-spoken. She may be the easiest difficult poet, toying with obscurity but too hilarious to be truly intimidating." — Elisa Gabbert, New York Times

"A lyrical reflection on the physicality of selfhood." — Kirkus Reviews