Plainwater: Essays And Poetry

In succinct and astonishingly beautiful prose and verse, Anne Carson exposes the fragile differences between "I" and "you," and between the modern and the classical, in a voice that shatters convention with its integrity and clarity.

Carson envisions a present-day interview with a 7th-century BC poet; lectures on subjects as diverse as hedonism and Ovid; imagines a 15th-century painter's muse at a phenomenology conference in Italy; and in the final section presents a poetic travelogue of a woman's life that beautifully contemplates the difference between the sexes. Plainwater is a stunning collection.