Men In The Off Hours

Description

The most exciting new poet in North America. Following her widely acclaimed Autobiography of Red ('a spellbinding achievement' - Susan Sontag)- a new collection of poetry and prose that displays Anne Carson's intoxicating mixture of opposites - the classic and the modern, cinema and print, narrative and verse. In Men in the Off Hours, Carson re-invents figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson and Audubon. She views the writings of Sappho, St Augustine and Catullus through a modern lens. She sets up startling juxtapositions (Lazarus among video paraphernalia; Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war). And, in a final prose poem, she meditates on the recent death of her mother. With its quiet, acute spirituality, its fearless wit and sensuality, and its joyful understanding that 'the fact of the matter for humans is imperfection', Men in the Off Hours is profound, provocative and unforgettable.

Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her awards and honours include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, the T.S. Eliot Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur 'Genius' Award.

The most exciting poet writing in English today * Michael Ondaatje * Her work is full of moments of startling originality and beauty. If she was a prose writer, she would be instantly recognised as a genius -- Colm Toibin Fragmentary, long-lined, often barely punctuated and flipping between the classical and the mdoern, it's a remarkable creation, funny and philosophical * Guardian * Carson writes in language any poet would kill for: sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender, brilliantly lighted -- Ruth Padel * New York Times Book Review * Anne Carson is a daring, learned, unsettling writer -- Susan Sontag