Glass, Irony and God by Anne Carson
In her book, Glass, Irony, and God, Anne Carson, a celebrated classicist, expertly weaves together modern and classical poetic threads. Among the poems in this collection are “The Glass Essay,” a moving poem about the end of a relationship that Carson wrote in the context of her study of the Bront sisters, “the Book of Isaiah,” a poem that captures the incredibly primitive feel of ancient Judaism, and “the Fall of Rome,” which Carson wrote about her journey to “find” Rome and her struggle to get over feelings of terrible alienation there.
Glass, Irony and God by Anne Carson
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The writing of Carson is replete with frosty ideas. It fits with the theme of “The Glass Essay,” which is about a woman whose emotional life has become as frozen as a tundra. However, it does make some of her other poetry a little more challenging to find. Her propensity to intellectualize occasionally renders her painfully unclear, particularly in her poems “TV Men” and “The Fall of Rome: A Traveler’s Guide.” Although I was appreciating the language’s wit, I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck they were talking about. However, her incredible knack for metaphor and sardonic humour serves to temper the depth of her ideas.
The Glass Essay is a fantastic literary work that explores the bond between a mother and daughter. It would probably just have a dozen lines if those portions were removed, but it is incredibly intricate. It’s a very intricate relationship. It’s also a fantastic novel on caring for a parent and dementia. The most intriguing thing I’ve ever read about Emily Bront, I believe. There is a whole library of material about Bronte, but Carson’s poem about her hanging the puppies, which begins, “She knows how to hang puppies, that Emily,” is the most perceptive and sympathetic use of her ideas. It’s amazing.
The collection comes to a close with the article “The Gender of Sound,” which explores the patriarchal notions of the ancient Greeks towards male and female sounds. Men were supposed to have deep, controlled voices. The voices of women and effeminate males were fundamentally undesirable, sick, and harmful. According to Carson, Greek patriarchs like Aristotle found the higher-pitched, chatty tone of feminine voices intolerable and disturbing. Carson shows how Freud, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway were all influenced by this dialogue. I wish this essay had been at the beginning of the book since it really clarifies what she is doing with her own work. It is intriguing. She is subverting this patriarchal notion of control with her spare, coolly sardonic language mixed with vibrant natural imagery.
