Nox
By Anne Carson
Publication Year: 2010
Type: Poetry
Genre:
Read on 2019-06-23
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★★
My roommate found this in a free box at her school and brought it home because Anne Carson. Duh. I can’t believe someone abandoned this gorgeous book. It’s a beautifully constructed thing and Anne Carson’s continued mastery of the fragment just makes my gay-ass heart sing. The book is a reproduction of a collage epitaph Carson made for her estranged brother upon his death in the early 2000s. It consists of bits of prose, childhood photos, and dictionary entries for Ancient Greek words. I noticed some other reviews didn’t like the dictionary entries - you really do have to read them and free-associate with the subject matter. It does break up the reading of the prose which is always interspersed with dictionary entries but includes some gorgeously evocative provocative passages on night, death, life that are all the more enchanting and lyrical for their unexpected surroundings. It is a sad book, to be sure, but ultimately a beautiful manifestation of Anne Carson’s artistry to which I am eternally devoted.
