Anne Carson

EBW 7/6/2016 

Poet, essayist and translator. In addition to her many highly-regarded translations of classical writers such as Sappho and Euripides, and her triptych rendering of An Oresteia (2009), Carson has published poems, essays, libretti, prose criticism and verse novels that often cross genres. Known for her supreme erudition—Merkin called her “one of the great pasticheurs”—Carson’s poetry can also be heart-breaking and she regularly writes on love, desire, sexual longing and despair. Carson has taught at many respected universities in both the US and Canada, including McGill and the University of Michigan. Her publishing career began with Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (1986), which also established Carson’s style of patterning her writings after classical Greek literature. Such works as Glass, Irony, and God (1992), Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1995) and Men in the Off Hours (2001) have helped seal the author’s reputation as unique among contemporary poets. But perhaps the most widely received examples of her particular specialty are Carson’s verse novels, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998) and The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (2001).