Nox

Nox, by Anne Carson is a unique collection of a various artistic mediums collected in a large book. The creative scrapbook like format was first published in 2010.  It is a new kind of poetry that breaks away from norms and has a style all its own. The is a highly personal art form, and the author even chose to use personal letters and belongings to express his feelings and various events in his life. One thing that was able to get though all of the art and color and complexity is that theme of family connection. The author’s relationship to his brother and his mother are extremely important throughout the book.

The role of images has a large part to do with how the story line progress and how his poetry is presented to the reader. In my personal opinion, while the imagery was lovely and especially the parts that were taken from his own life, at times perhaps it took away from the meaning of his words. The style of writing is a lot to taken in, however if one takes the time to absorb the material it is truly beautiful. One page that really stuck with me was the quote “If you are elegy begin with the blush” it was below a scanned image of various red crumpled up paper or maybe wax or leaves. This really struck me as a great use of imagery and text. Beautiful words coupled with an interesting imagery.

The non-traditional book format took some getting used to and I perhaps would have liked to be able to compare this text in the way it was presented to us, and in a more traditional book sense. When looking at this book for the fist time, I was not really sure what to do with it. Its an odd format for sure however interesting and unique. This scrapbook of words and images reads like a diary, an intimate inside look into the deepest thoughts of the author. The story is one of loss and emotional honesty. The incorporation of texts by Catallus felt as though a commentary on the life of Anne Carson. It felt as though the quotes were places extremely carefully and thoughtfully, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the book as a whole. Greek definitions really made me think about the English language, it made me really think about word usage and I think that is something I would like to play with in my own work. How we use words and couple meanings can be incredible important and powerful in poetry and I would like to further explore that as a way to emphasis points in my own work. Carson also did a great job of intertwining two seemingly unrelated topics and making them work as a whole book. While the format at ties took away from the meaning I think I learned a lot about poetry and format, as well as how to incorporate multiple authors into a text. This was one of my favorite readings we have done this year.