The Glass Essay

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"The Glass Essay" is a poem by Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson. This thirty-six page poem opens Carson's Glass, Irony and God, which was published in 1995.

Contents

Content

In the poem, the narrator – who is visiting her mother's home on the Canadian moors – meditates on an ex-lover, the poems of Emily Brontë, and a variety of other interrelated topics. [1] Carson describes the poem as an attempt at "understanding what life feels like." [2]

Composition

The piece consists of nine distinct subtitled sections, each of which consists of three or four-lined stanzas. The first three sections of the poem set up the framework of the poem's structure, describing the narrative environment, physical landscape and interpersonal relationships that concern the narrator. [3]

Carson herself, along with several critics, have referred to the poem as a lyric essay, despite its inclusion in a book of poetry. [4]

Reception

The poem has been republished in several anthologies, including the 2006 version of The Norton Anthology of English Literature . Despite international acclaim from scholars such as classicist Guy Davenport, Carson has been also been criticized for her "chopped prose." [5]

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References

  1. O’Rourke, Meghan (2010-07-05). "The Unfolding". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  2. "Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry No. 88". The Paris Review (Interview) (171). Interviewed by Aitken, Will. Fall 2004. ISSN   0031-2037 . Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  3. Souffrant, Leah (2014). ""She said plain, burned things": A Feminist Poetics of the Unsayable in Twentieth Century Literary & Visual Culture". CUNY Academic Works.
  4. Shelton, Margaret (November 2016). "Anne Carson: Shaping the Self and Shifting Under the Reader's Gaze". Furman Humanities Review. 27.
  5. Rae, Ian (2011). "Verglas: Narrative Technique in Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay"". ESC: English Studies in Canada. 37 (3–4): 163–186. doi:10.1353/esc.2011.0054.