Anne Carson

Anne Carson

Anne Carson (*1950) is a Canadian classicist, translator, poet, and essayist who fuses ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. Some of her poetry is highly experimental, and the way she fuses not just ideas but different literary genres is immensely creative.

No attempt has been made here to compile an exhaustive list of secondary sources on Anne Carson’s work.

Books by Anne Carson (in Chronological Order)
Anne Carson

Eros the Bittersweet (1986; London: Daley Archive Press, 1998).

Short Talks (1992; London, Ontario: Brick Books, 2015).

Glass, Irony and God (New York: New Directions, 1995).

Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1995; New York: Vintage Books, 2000).

Glass and God (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998).

*Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

Men in the Off Hours (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000).

The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001).

*Electra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) [Sophocles; trans.: Anne Carson].

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (London: Virago, 2003) [Sappho; trans.: Anne Carson].

Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006).

*Grief Lessons: Four Plays (New York: New York Review Books, 2006) [Euripides; trans.: Anne Carson].

An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos, Elektra by Sophokles, Orestes by Euripides (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) [trans.: Anne Carson].

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (London: Jonathan Cape, 2010).

Nox (New York: New Directions, 2010).

Antigonick (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2012) [Sophokles; trans.: Anne Carson].

Red Doc> (London: Jonathan Cape, 2013).

Nay Rather (London: Sylph Editions, 2013).

Iphigenia among the Taurians (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014) [Euripides; trans.: Anne Carson].

The Albertine Workout (New York: New Directions, 2014).

Bakkhai: A New Version by Anne Carson (London: Oberon Books, 2015) [Euripides].

Antigone (London: Oberon Books, 2015) [Sophokles: trans.: Anne Carson].

Float (London:  Jonathan Cape, 2016).

If I’m Scared We Can’t Win (Penguin Books, 2016).

Norma Jean Baker of Troy: A Version of Euripides’ Helen (London: Oberon Books, 2019).

The Trojan Women: A Comic (Hexham: Bloodaxe Books, 2021) [Euripides; Rosanna Bruno; text: Anne Carson].

H of H Playbook (London: Jonathan Cape, 2021).

Wrong Norma (London: Jonathan Cape, 2024).

Secondary Literature (in Alphabetical Order)

†Aitken, Will, Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo van Hove, and the Art of Resistance (Regina, Saskatchewan: University of Regina Press, 2018).

Anderson, Sam, ‘The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson’, The New York Times Magazine (14 March 2013).

†Coles, Elizabeth Sarah, Anne Carson: The Glass Essayist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

†Jansen, Laura (ed.), Anne Carson, Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

†Ruprecht, Louis A., Jr, Anne Carson’s Classical Desires: Reach without Grasping (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

*Wilkinson, Joshua Marie (ed.), Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015).

  • Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Introduction
  • Jessica Fisher, ‘Anne Carson’s Stereoscopic Poetics’
  • Dan Beachy-Quick, ‘What Kind of Monster Am I?’
  • Martin Corless-Smith, ‘Living on the Edge: The Bittersweet Place of Poetry’
  • Brian Teare, ‘Reading Carson Reading Brontë RE: The Soul’s Difficult Sexual Destiny’
  • Virginia Konchan, ‘The Gender of Sound: No Witness, No Words (or Song)?’
  • Timothy Liu, ‘On Anne Carson’s Short Talks‘
  • Christine Hume, ‘How Is a Pilgrim Like a Soldier? Anne Carson’s “Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela”‘
  • Kristi Maxwell, ‘The Unbearable Withness of Being: On Anne Carson’s Plainwater‘
  • Jennifer K. Dick, ‘The Pilgrim and the Anthropologist’
  • Harmony Holiday, ‘Masters of the Open Secret: Meditations on Anne Carson’s Autobioigraphy of Red‘
  • Bruce Beasley, ‘Who Can a Monster Blame for Being Red? Three Fragments on the Academic and the “Other” in Autobiography of Red‘
  • Graham Foust, ‘”Some Affluence”: Reading Wallace Stevens with Anne Carson’s Economy of the Unlost‘
  • Karla Kelsey, ‘To Gesture at Absence: A Reading-with’
  • Richard Greenfield, ‘”Parts of Time Fall on Her”: Anne Carson’s Men in the Off Hours‘
  • Douglas A. Martin, ‘Lacuna Is for Reign’
  • Andrea Rexilius, ‘The Light of This Wound: Marriage, Longing, Desire in Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband‘
  • J. Michael Martinez, ‘Who with Her Tears Soaks Mortal Streaming: Anne Carson and Wonderwater‘
  • Hannah Ensor, ‘Antagonistic Collaborations, Tender Questions: On Anne Carson’s Answer Scars / Roni Horn’s Wonderwater‘
  • Cole Swensen, ‘Opera Povera: Decreation, an Opera in Three Parts‘
  • Johanna Skibsrud, ‘”To Undo the Creature”: The Paradox of Writing in Anne Carson’s Decreation‘
  • Julie Carr, ‘No Video: On Anne Carson’
  • Ander Monson, ‘X inside an X’
  • Eleni Sikelianos, ‘Sentences on Nox‘
  • Bianca Stone, ‘Your Soul Is Blowing Apart: Antigonick and the Influence of Collaborative Process’
  • Andrew Zawacki, ‘”Standing in / the Nick of Time”: Antigonick in Seven Short Takes’
  • Vanessa Place, ‘What’s So Funny about Antigonick?’
  • Lily Hoang, ‘From Geryon to G: Anne Carson’s Red Doc> and the Avatar’
  • Elizabeth Robinson, ‘An Antipoem That Condenses Everything: Anne Carson’s Translation of the Fragments of Sappho’
  • John Melillo, ‘Sappho and the “Papyrological Event”‘
  • Kazim Ali, ‘Bringing the House Down: Trojan Horses and Other Malware in Anne Carson’s Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides‘
  • Erika L. Weiberg, ‘Lessons in Grief and Corruption: Anne Carson’s Translations of Euripides’
  • Angela Hume, ‘The “Dread Work” of Lyric: Anne Carson’s An Oresteia‘
  • Peter Streckfus, ‘Collaborating on Decreation: An Interview with Anne Carson’
Sigla

* = not yet read
‡ = Kindle book
† = not available