Anne Carson's "Glass, Irony and God"
I read Carson's long poem "The Glass Essay" again yesterday, and enjoyed it immensely for its narrative maneuvers and literary musings, although Guy Davenport, in his introduction, exaggerates when he says that it is a poem "richer than most novels nowadays." His comment either means something, in which case it is patently false since Carson's poem does not aim at novelistic detail, or it means nothing, playing it safe with that qualifier "most." "The Glass Essay" tells two intertwined stories: the abandonment by a lover, and the suffering of a father from Alzheimer's. Presiding over the stories is the tutelary spirit of Emily Bronte, loveless, unloved. The language of the poem is deliberately unlyrical; some may even call it prosy. Here's the opening of the section titled "Three": Three silent women at the kitchen table. My mother's kitchen is dark and small but out the window there is the moor, paralyzed wi...