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b171c0a
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My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. 'Listen,' he said, 'life and no escape.
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Anne Carson |
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f543a91
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Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue green shoots and the plant called "audacity", which poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said. ... I will do anything to escape boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never u..
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Anne Carson |
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bc52d86
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He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.
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psychology
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Anne Carson |
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042feb2
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in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestial crust of the earth which is proportionately 10 times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures. Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth's core on the inside to meet the cold air of the world and stop as we do, just in time.
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Anne Carson |
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a17edda
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I am talking about evil. It blooms. It eats. It grins.
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Anne Carson |
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392734d
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You read a hundred military manuals you won't find the word kill they trick you into killing.
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war
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Anne Carson |
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8940e61
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there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.
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Anne Carson |
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4e02521
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Outside, the natural world was enjoying a moment of total strength.
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Anne Carson |
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2a73818
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She stumbled then and Geryon caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong. When is it polite to let go someone's arm after you grab it?
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Anne Carson |
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741aea5
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at the bottom of the ocean is a layer of water that has never moved...
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Anne Carson |
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cfce6b4
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My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
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Anne Carson |
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2b0998f
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Friends disappear or they are powerless. This is what misfortune means an acid test of friendship. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
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loss
friendship
life
humanity-and-society
friendship-true-and-loyal
friendship-quotes
trivial
misfortune
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Anne Carson |
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d53935f
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That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted although married six months. Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure we got it right. He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully. Early next day I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published in a small quarterly magazine. Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.
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poetry
humor
husband
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Anne Carson |
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78eb442
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He had a respect for facts maybe this was one.
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fictions
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Anne Carson |
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82f04d9
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It was the hour when snow goes blue and streetlights come on and a hare may pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book.
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woods
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Anne Carson |
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f47bb0b
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DEATH . . . And now you are here to fight for this woman. You know her promise is given. She has to die or her husband won't go free. APOLLO Relax, I'm not breaking any laws. DEATH Why the bow, if you're breaking no laws? APOLLO I always carry a bow, it's my trademark.
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humor
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Anne Carson |
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221bb1c
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Your grief is as great as your splendor was: some god is weighing the one out equal to the other.
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Anne Carson |
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ed841eb
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Town of the Dragon Vein If you wake up too early listen for it. A sort of inverted whistling the sound of sound. Being withdrawn after all where? Does all the sound in the world. Come from day after day? From mountains but. They have to give it back. At night just. As your nightly dreams. Are taps. Open reversely. In. To. Time.
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Anne Carson |
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a73814c
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Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead-calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
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Anne Carson |
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3af2601
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It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.
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Anne Carson |
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1b0c465
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Geryon was a monster everything about him was red
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Anne Carson |
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5c8d84b
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It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.
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introduction
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Anne Carson |
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31959ae
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To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.
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Anne Carson |
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75e2ea2
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There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me.
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poet
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Anne Carson |
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5fc413f
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fr. 2 All We as Leaves He (following Homer) compares man's life with the leaves. All we as leaves in the shock of it: spring- one dull gold bounce and you're there. You see the sun? - I built that. As a lad. The Fates lashing their tails in a corner. But (let me think) wasn't it a hotel in Chicago where I had the first of those - my body walking out of the room bent on some deadly errand and me up on the ceiling just sort of fading out..
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Anne Carson |
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a41e318
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Then the edge asserts itself. You are not a god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you now see. Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual.
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self
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Anne Carson |
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650435e
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Where does unbelief begin? When I was young there were degrees of certainty. I could say, Yes I know that I have two hands. Then one day I awakened on a planet of people whose hands occasionally disappear-
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Anne Carson |
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1ff72f5
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THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM [all snap flags] Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
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poetry
religion
philosophy
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Anne Carson |
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3d4aa48
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some hours later they were down at the railroad tracks standing close together by the switch lights. The huge night moved overhead scattering drops of itself.
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Anne Carson |
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af90922
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Geryon was amazed at himself. He saw Herakles just about every day now. The instant of nature forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life leaving behind just ghosts rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny. He burned in the presence of his mother I hardly know you anymore, she said leaning against the doorway of his room. It had rained suddenly at suppertime, now sunset was st..
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Anne Carson |
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f172c45
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Language is what eases the pain of living with other people, language is what makes the wounds come open again.
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Anne Carson |
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35626de
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Lava bread makes you passionate.
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Anne Carson |
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1a7c464
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M: ... but everytime I start in everytime I everytime you see I would have to tell the whole story all over again or else lie so I lie I just lie who are they who are the storytellers who can put an end to stories
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Anne Carson |
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9778a87
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And now time is rushing towards them where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.
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Anne Carson |
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c3b3dc4
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Time as hunger. Time passing and gazing. Time as perseverance. Mountain time. Time as paper folded to look like a mountain. Time compared to the wild fantastic silence of stars.
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Anne Carson |
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40e53bf
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Some conversations are not about what they're about.
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Anne Carson |
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dbe983c
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Early one morning words were missing. Before that, words were not. Facts were, faces were. In a good story, Aristotle tells us, everything that happens is pushed by something else. Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue-green shoots and the plant called "audacity," which poets mistake for..
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Anne Carson |
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50ea552
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CHORUS: Helen! wild mad Helen you murdered so many beneath Troy. Now you've crowned yourself one final perfect time, a crown of blood that will not wash away. Strife walks with you everywhere you go. KLYTAIMESTRA: Oh, stop whining. And why get angry at Helen? As if she singlehandedly destroyed those multitudes of men. As if she all alone made this wound in us
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Anne Carson |
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02ba206
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Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him Joyfully
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monsters
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Anne Carson |
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7dc3dcc
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Grief and rage--you need to contain that, to put a frame around it, where it can play itself out without you or your kin having to die. There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you--may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. Y..
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rage
grief
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Anne Carson |
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daed4df
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The fact that Anna is somewhere having coffee or a dream is an assault on me. I hate these moments of poverty. What does man eat? ask the phenomenologists. Like the dogs, names, down there, starving.
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Anne Carson |
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80ac127
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He / thought of women. / What is it like to be a woman / listening in the dark? Black mantle of silence / stretches between them like geothermal pressure. / Ascent of the rapist up the stairs seems as slow as / lava. She listens / to the blank space where / his consciousness is, moving towards her. Lava can / move as slow as / nine hours per inch. [...] She wonders if / he is listening too. The cruel thing is, she falls asleep / listening.
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poetry
autobiography-of-red
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Anne Carson |
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9a4ca33
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26. Plants do not actually sleep. Nor do they lie or even bluff. They do, however, expose their genitalia.
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Anne Carson |
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2608f97
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There is a loneliness that fills the plain. Total. Lunar.
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Anne Carson |