Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (Vintage Contemporaries)

There is nothing like stumbling on someone you immediately love & lots of other people have already known about for a long time. I thank the NY Times for their articles on Ms Carson and therefore leading me to her amazing mind. Her entries in this volume are like wordy koans...your mind says "yes I know exactly the truth of that"....but is there a conclusion? Of course there is a conclusion, but it takes time for you to think about it ....and your answer might not be like anyone else. All I can say is that this book is an open road....leading somewhere worth going.

One of the most beautiful things I have ever read.

sylvia plath style writings of poetry and prose, diverse and intense journey, good read,

Highly lyrical, Plainwater works more inside Carson's language than outside in the realm of ideas. In fact, the language itself seems to be the idea. Rather, Carson invokes ideas instead explicating. At the very least, Carson’s lyricism veils larger ideas about loss and love and art from the reader through impressionistic “Short Talks,” poems, lyric postcards, and associative leaps that leave the reader jolted and moved, if confused. Take the section “On the Mona Lisa": "Every day he poured his question into her, as you pour water from one vessel into another, and it poured back. Don’t tell me he was painting his mother, lust, et cetera. There is a moment when the water is not in one vessel nor in the other -- what a thirst it was, and he supposed that when the canvas became completely empty he would stop. But women are strong. She knew vessels, she knew water, she knew mortal thirst" (37). This “Short Talk” reads more like a prose poem than the lecture the chapter title implies, forcing the reader to firstly think more about the language and the images than the ideas. But then the ideas emerge from the language. Beginning with the topic of the Mona Lisa, Carson jumps into the realms of water and questions, imagistically painting a relationship between the woman (Mona Lisa) and her creator/author/painter (Da Vinci). She abstracts a relationship through talk of water and vessels and thirst. But Carson claims that “there is a moment when the water is not in one vessel nor in the other,” pausing within a moment of time to jump out of the reciprocal relationship that she creates between the painting and the painter (and the woman?). The art of the painting, the question of the art, hovers above both Da Vinci and his painted woman. Then the woman must bear the brunt of the man’s art: “But women are strong. She knew vessels, she knew water, she knew mortal thirst,” indicating that she understands the painter’s art more than he. She knows while he pours. Maybe that knowing is more important to Carson than the act of pouring. She trusts her subjects (and her readers) to understand her art -- or, she trusts us to act as a vessel for her images. Any reader of Plainwater must be open to experimentation and confusion -- otherwise, Plainwater may be an excruciating and evasive experience. To understand Carson is to receive rather than read. We must try to know rather than try to pour our own meaning on her language. We must be vessel.

As always, beautifully written, intensely interesting...those walking the Camino should find this and follow her....

I never get tired of this collection. I am often shocked into breathlessness when I read Carson's work.

Superb work by a stunning writer.

Love IT!! N

a

Sublime

L'annuncio è per un libro edito Knopf & Double day, invece arriva una versione scannerizzata e stampata su carta orribile. Il libro e la stampa sono di qualità pessima e non corrispondono a quello che era stato annunciato. È la terza volta che mi succede.

perfect. thanks