The Beauty Of The Husband

Description

'Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today. She is a rare talent... brilliant and full of wit, passionate and also deeply moving' - Michael Ondaatje Since Glass and God, which was her first full-length collection published in Britain and which was nominated for the 1998 Forward Prize, Anne Carson has published a book a year to extraordinary critical acclaim. Her last two volumes, Autobiography of Red and Men in the Off Hours were both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and she has received numerous North American awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. In her brilliant new book, she tells a single story. A long-time love, now a crumbling marriage, unfolds in 29 'tangos' of narrative verse, informed by the romanticism of Keats, the wisdom of the classical world and, most importatnly, by Carson's own unique sensibility. The unnamed narrator - sometimes 'I', sometimes 'the wife' - speaks of the man she calls only 'the husband', illuminating moments that are by turn sensual, erotic, painful and heartbreaking. The Beauty of the Husband is a work that explores these oldest of lyrical subjects - beauty, desire, love, betrayal - with freshness and devastating power. **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Anne Carson was the first woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She has also won a Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize. She currently teaches at the University of Michigan. Her most recent collection, Decreation, was published by Cape in 2006.

The most instantly penetrating of contemporary poets... she has great intellectual and emotional knowledge, a vast habitat, to every bit of which she brings powerful perception and a freshness as startling as a loud knock at the door -- Calvin Bedient * New York Times Book Review * Anne Carson, a Canadian, is quite remarkable. She really has captured me. I have been reading her obsessively over the past months. A stunning writer -- Harold Bloom * Paris Review * In every form we find a sly, plainspoken eroticism that is a perfect complement to her sly, plainspoken intellectual ardour... a truly great poet of the 21st century -- Rebecca Wolff * Time Out * She is an exceptionally exciting new voice -- John Lancaster * Daily Telegraph * Carson writes ina language any poet would kill for: sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender, brilliantly lighted -- Ruth Padel * New York Times Book Review *