Award-winning Anne Carson is “the most exciting poet writing in English today,” said Michael Ondaatje. Carson, an essayist and classicist, is the author of many collections and translations, including Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband, Eros the Bittersweet and Autobiography of Red. She made full use of the 92nd Street Y stage on March 26 for a dramatic reading/performance that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. Fortunately the video excerpt above will do just that. Matthew Hittinger, who recently released a collection of poems called Pear Slip, was in attendance and his description here explains the precisely deliberate action:
The second piece was “Possessive Used As Drink (Me): A Lecture on Pronouns in the Form of 15 Sonnets” and clearly piqued my interest as it was a corona sonnet cycle (oh how I love those!). This piece involved a video of three dancers, two live dancers on stage, Robert Currie sort of subtly cuing and directing, and a panel that consisted of Anne and two other female readers. Some of the poems Anne read by herself out loud. Some were pre-recorded and the three voices would all read, sometimes in unison with each other and Anne’s pre-recorded voice, sometimes staggered beginning and ending at different points, and often at different registers and tones, even singing sometimes, that created this layered, at times ethereal, and definitely a Greek chorus-sounding performance. Another piece that I would need to see in print before I could discuss in more detail, but the performance grabbed my interest, especially the sonic layering.
Upcoming readings include: Andrew Motion and Wendy Salinger (Apr 7), Garrison Keillor (Apr 9), Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton (Apr 13), Imre Kertész with musical performance by András Schiff (Apr 17), Andrew Sean Greer and Meg Wolitzer (Apr 24) and The Poets’ Theatre II: Gilgamesh adapted by Yusef Komunyakaa and Chad Gracia, directed by Robert Scanlan (Apr 28).
