Anne Carson’s place in contemporary poetry remains uncertain. Although her books, which blend literary criticism, theory, poetry, prose and ancient Greek drama, have received praise, many find her intellectual eclecticism tiresomely precocious. Two of Carson’s more noted forays into the prose poem, “Autobiography of Red” and “The Beauty of the Husband,” demonstrate her ability to meditate upon lost love. The former received mixed reviews. Some identified Carson’s ability to move between modernity and classicism as a return to the poetic forms of the early twentieth century, while others claimed Carson drowned herself in a pool of shallow thought and overwrought allusion. The latter book received similar marks. Nonetheless, Carson won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000, certifying her place as an academic as well as a poet.

Little is known about Carson, who has largely shielded herself from the public sphere. As a result, the Vintage Contemporary editions of her work contain no biographical information. Since high school, Carson has been a classics scholar, training with her teachers to translate Greek and Latin texts. Her college years were interrupted several times due to frustration with the academic system: required classes and preferred modes of thinking caused Carson to retreat into the world of graphic arts for a short period before returning to school and receiving her Ph.D in comparative literature. Carson now teaches at the University of Michigan. The Classical Stage Company, based in New York City, will show her translations of Agamemnon, Electra, and Orestes in the upcoming theater season.

“Autobiography of Red,” published in 1998, tells the story of Geryon, a boy who doubles as a red-winged creature. Carson creates a palimpsest, beginning with a meditation upon the lost works of Steischoros, continuing to tell of Geryon’s troubled childhood, and concluding with his equally difficult first love affair with a wayward older boy named Herakles (a spelling notably taken from the aforementioned Greek poet). The story itself is relatively uncomplicated: the boys run away to the island Herakles came from to see a volcano, a source of passion and destruction. When Geryon’s aloof mother begs for her son’s return, Herakles relents, requesting friendship and catalyzing heartbreak. The two meet years later in Argentina, only to continue their adventures into the craggy landscape of Herakles’ selfish homosexual heart.

Carson’s prose fluctuates between tense and tender, navigating the ways in which each of us identifies small objects (animals, fruit bowls and cigarettes are prominently featured in “Autobiography”) as cataclysmic identifiers of emotion.

In “Red,” the enveloping destructiveness of the volcano typifies Carson’s approach to the visual; as she puts it, “seeing is just a substance.” Though the volcanoes visited over the course of the story serve as narrative markers, they primarily act as emblems of the movement from red to black, from passion to death. Unlike other poets, Carson does not always stick to meter or rhyme. Her words become images and facts just as well as they stand against darkness or in light. They are substance as much as sight itself, abstract but coherent. This creative process hints at the emotional violence Carson’s characters both experience and enact. Whereas many poets employ imagery to ground the abstract or philosophical in the concrete, Carson expresses the majority of her narrative through images that double as philosophical discourses. This emphasis on the word as a function of the narrative rather than an external indicator makes Carson a controversial figure in the field of poetry.

A similar destructiveness characterizes “The Beauty of the Husband,” in which a scorned middle-aged woman recalls her ravishing, deadbeat ex-husband. Typography, Foucault, paper products and flowers intermingle to create this essay on Keats, a response to the famous poet’s claim that “Beauty is Truth.” Neither Carson nor her narrator settles for this evaluation: beauty has bred cruelty, greed and death. Although the narrative concerns the unraveling of a relationship that began with the loss of teenage innocence, it follows these two figures into adulthood as their crimes against one another mount. Plagiarism and complacency stand in for lies whispered after forced lovemaking, cries into the darkness of Romantic poetry’s cave for an understanding of the world’s beauty amidst such human indecency.

The narrative of “Beauty” unfolds elliptically, revealing secrets through a non-linear history. The emotional turmoil of its main character, our narrator, hinges upon poetics far more than “Autobiography of Red.” The intertextuality of the Husband could be seen as negative. The notes that follow the text list each of the philosophical works that Carson drew upon for inspiration and affirmation. Although such self-conscious citations are similar to T.S. Eliot’s annotated “The Wasteland,” Carson’s beauty too often derives from the thoughts of others rather than building on the ideas from these canonical works.

Whereas “Autobiography of Red” splatters its canvas with lust, “Beauty” traps its readers in a dusty room without tears. Anne Carson’s work calculates the emotions of its characters. Her narratives describe each of her characters forging new identities. What comes in these liminal situations is perhaps easier for her to describe than interstitial, often quiet, moments of contentment. Instead, Carson’s attempts to recount these moments of being feel rushed or infused with a sense of pain, a longing to fulfill what has already been obtained.