That comment does not seek to denigrate the text in any way, since this brief rendering of the original is wonderful, it is just that I have missed out on an additional experience and feel annoyed with myself for being a cheapskate. Carson's mother Margaret (1913–1997) died during the writing of Men in the Off Hours. Carson closed the collection with the prose piece "Appendix to Ordinary Time", using crossed-out phrases from the diaries and manuscripts of Virginia Woolf to craft an epitaph for her. [3] Red Doc> has been read as a second elegy for the death of her mother. [7] Carson has described her mother as the love of her life. [76] [77] I think people come like ‘Oh, they’re gonna be naked!’ and then say ‘Oh, that was beautiful art,’” he says. “It’s like those ‘Simpsons’ ads with ‘Sex! Now that I have your attention, here’s what I was actually trying to tell you.’” Carson's brother Michael was arrested for drug dealing in 1978. Jumping bail, he fled Canada and she never saw him again. [76] Carson dealt with the disappearance of her brother from her life in "Water Margins: An Essay on Swimming by My Brother" (collected in Plainwater), which is written as a kind of memoir. [72] In 2000, he called her and they arranged to meet in Copenhagen where he lived, but he died before they could reconnect. [78] Nox, an epitaph Carson created for her brother in 2000 and published in 2010, has been described as her most explicitly personal work. [7] a b "Anne Carson: Princess of Asturias Award for Literature 2020". Fundación Princesa de Asturias. Archived from the original on 15 September 2020 . Retrieved 18 June 2020.

Currie: The next question is what form it should take. Should it be a book or a performance? And often it becomes all of these things eventually. With Cassandra (an essay on translation) the initial form was a performance. Nox was a book that became a performance. Q: Carson actually did two translations of this play, and this is the shorter version. How did you choose between them? T. S. Eliot poetry prize shortlist announced". BBC News. 24 October 2013 . Retrieved 12 September 2020. It may be tempting to dismiss the illustrations as merely quirky—one of the Chorus bears the Star Trek insignia on its chest, while elsewhere a figure wears a football helmet. But these touches serve to heighten the absurdity and dark humor of the senseless world Carson has created. Take, for example, the dictator of Thebes and arguably the true tragic character of the work. Forever refusing to heed the wisdom of others, Kreon relents at the last, only to find his family dead and his city in despair. However, Kreon’s is a tyranny beyond political power. He first enters the play with a decree: “Here are Kreon’s verbs for today: ADJUDICATE LEGISLATE / SCANDALIZE / CAPITALIZE” and, “Here are Kreon’s nouns: MEN / REASON / TREASON/ DEATH/ SHIP OF STATE / MINE.” Kreon is an autocrat of language; his words are his people’s words, because he declares it so. Indeed, when the Chorus reminds the despot that “mine isn’t a noun,” he replies simply, “It is if you capitalize it.” What happens when a project resists collaboration? Surely you've encountered problems with the process. What kind of discussion ensues to get around doubts and obstacles in the group? Is it possible to manipulate these ruptures into becoming a stronger part of the project?Carson: Itwas pretty much immediately a goodidea and hardship actually becomes a pleasure, a sort of distraction. Notable Books". The New York Times. 3 December 2000. p.66. Archived from the original on 17 November 2020 . Retrieved 2 October 2020.

The Antigone was first written and performed in 442 BCE, near the apex of the Golden Age of Athens. Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, defies an edict issued by the new king, her uncle Kreon, that forbids the proper burial of her brother, Polyneikes, who was just killed in battle. Declared an enemy of the state, he is left to rot on the hill outside Thebes. In the opening scene of the play, Antigone tells her sister Ismene she intends to bury their brother. Ismene refuses to help her, fearful of the consequences of acting against Kreon’s new law. When Antigone is caught pouring dust and water on her brother’s body, she is brought before the king. In Sophokles’s version (as per the 1939 translation by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald), Antigone is respectful in her speech, willing to argue her case. And initially Kreon interacts with her as a family member, not a threat, just a wayward girl acting out of turn. He describes how he will break her will as one would break a wild horse. Carson: Out of being interested in what they're doing. Because we already have a sense of what we do. How do you know whena project is ripe for collaboration or when it might resist certain aspects of collaboration? Carson, Anne (June 2010). "Prometheus Bound: An Excerpt from the Play by Aischylos". The Wolf (23): 6–7. A Reading by Anne Carson, The Mohr Visiting Poet". Stanford: Event Calendar. Stanford University. 23 April 2013. Archived from the original on 20 January 2022 . Retrieved 20 September 2020.Even though the seven actors present only have one naked rehearsal day under their (figurative) belts with just over a week to go before opening night, the mood at rehearsal is relaxed. Carson joined the New York University Creative Writing Program as Distinguished Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor in 2009. [66] Together with her husband and collaborator Robert Currie, she teaches an annual class at NYU on the art of collaboration, called "Egocircus". [67] Carson was an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University from 2010 to 2016, [68] and the Mohr Visiting Poet at Stanford University (Creative Writing Program) in 2013. [69] She joined Bard College as Visiting Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in 2014, teaching classical studies and the written arts. [70] Carson has described her more diverse role in the latter part of her career as "a visiting [whatever]", and her decades spent teaching ancient Greek as "a total joy". [67] Honours [ edit ] The Greek classic has gotten some updates from Canadian playwright and poet Anne Carson, whose 2012 version runs 75 minutes and is getting a Full Circle Theater production that opens Saturday at Mixed Blood Theatre. Oogie_Push plays the title character. Currie: It's about the people we're with and then you think of something fun you could do together and in Anne's case, it always starts with a text, doesn't it?

Carson was also an Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2007, where she worked on a translation of the ancient Greek play Prometheus Bound (attributed to Aeschylus), [54] an excerpt of which was published in 2010. [55] a b "Fellows: Anne Carson". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 1 October 2019 . Retrieved 12 September 2020. I want to ask if you have any favorite collaborators. I know when I took your class it was Marina Abramović and Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen) for me. Carson’s protagonist is more audacious and irreverent than her Sophoklean predecessor, defiant to the point of seeming mad. Even her beloved sister Ismene remarks, “You are a person in love with the impossible … although you go without your mind.” Ismene herself is, in some sense, a soldier for the status quo, preferring to support a corrupt government than defend her own rights. “Don’t cross the line,” she begs Antigone. “Girls cannot force their way against men … you aim too high.”Faculty History Project: Anne Carson". Millennium Project, University of Michigan. Archived from the original on 11 August 2022 . Retrieved 20 September 2020. However, the reviewer does make time for some praise, saying "at intervals, lightning does strike." Carson's father Robert had Alzheimer's disease. " The Glass Essay" (collected in Glass, Irony, and God), "Very Narrow" (collected in Plainwater), and "Father's Old Blue Cardigan" (collected in Men in the Off Hours) all deal with his mental and physical decline. Creative Scotland / Cove Park Muriel Spark Fellowship: Anne Carson". Cove Park. Archived from the original on 16 September 2020 . Retrieved 16 September 2020. Readers who are not familiar with ancient Greek texts will most likely feel a bit alienated by all this, but unfamiliarity is, perhaps, the point. Unlike versions of Antigone that try to capture the drama's grandeur (such as Robert Fagles's translation for Penguin) or to make it relevant (including Don Taylor's version, currently at the National Theatre), Carson's aims to show the difficulty of translation, the truly "unbearable" nature of tragedy. The chorus's famous "Ode to Man", in which man is described as able to overcome everything but death, is, in Carson's telling, a bizarre mish-mash of worlds: "Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more / terribly quiet than man / his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea … and every Tuesday / down he grinds the unastonishable earth / with horse and shatter … Every outlet works but one / : Death stays dark."