美国国家公共电台 NPR Anne Carson's Poetry Collection 'Float' In Unconventional Medium To Suit The Message

Anne Carson's Poetry Collection 'Float' In Unconventional Medium To Suit The Message

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0006:31repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. SCOTT SIMON, HOST: 

Anne Carson's book of poems come in a clear plastic box where they float, which is also the title of this collection - small chapbooks that hold poems, jottings, lists, reflections and excerpts² of thoughts that can be shuffled³, rearranged, set aside or read over and over as a reader chooses.

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and MacArthur Fellow. Her books include "Antigonick," "Nox" and "The Beauty Of The Husband: A Fictional⁴ Essay In 29 Tangos." That won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She's also a devoted⁵, roving teacher of the classics and literature. She joins us now from Valencia, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us.

ANNE CARSON: Thank you for asking me.

SIMON: Why this form?

CARSON: Well, mainly because these various pieces of writing were originally performance pieces. So they were done on a stage with - often with other people helping⁶ and my collaborator⁷ Currie designing the whole thing.

So we wanted the book to retain that separateness of the pieces because it isn't a collection in the sense of an organic whole intended to be read in a certain order with a certain trajectory⁸ of thought or feeling. It is genuinely a collection. And then the floating is because they float.

SIMON: Let me read the beginning of "The Designated Mourner By Wally Shawn," which is by you.

CARSON: OK.

SIMON: (Reading) Go to the Wally Shawn play. It is hopeless. I mean, production - impeccable. Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope. Figure this out. Next day - listening to Sam Cooke. What comes to me in a dawned cafe is, no need to fear death. There will be a tunnel and light.

Do poets find something to hope for in things that are hopeless?

CARSON: Sort of. Well, I don't know. I guess they do. I guess they do because if your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence. And so it's - it moves down into that other level of problem-solving, which is grammar and syntax. And that can always come out somewhere - I mean, somewhere you didn't know it would come out - which is perhaps hopeful.

SIMON: What's the old phrase? That to a carpenter the world looks like a nail?

CARSON: (Laughter) Yes. Exactly. A task - and a task has a beginning and an end and then a thing made. Poetry - poiesis means a thing made. And making is always a slightly hopeful thing because once you've made something, it'll - the world will be different.

SIMON: I gather you've been kind of an itinerant⁹ teacher of the classics and literature in recent years.

CARSON: Yes. I've gone here and there. I teach classics about half the time. And the other half of the time, Currie and I teach some sort of other thing that we call ego¹⁰ circus.

SIMON: What really connected between you and ancient Greece?

CARSON: I never know how to answer that question. The Greek language seems different than other languages. I'm not the only person to think this. Usually, I come up with some kind of dopey metaphor¹¹ for why it's different. But it seems, somehow, more original, more like being in the morning of language.

And that's partly because the words are new. Those people are inventing ways of thinking about stuff - but also because we have thousands of years of building the words into other things, using their words to build out our words. And so, by now, it's all kind of a dusty superstructure. But they were down in the roots of it.

SIMON: Well, you reminded me of something I read in one of your chapbooks here. This is from the one called "Contempt." (Reading) Homer made his living as a bard¹². Historians think we get glimpses of what his hard life might've been like from certain characters in the "Odyssey¹³" who literally¹⁴ sing for their supper. Then you go on to say, (reading) Homer must have felt this pressure to come up with an epic¹⁵ poem that would sound totally new to an audience that had loved his previous best-seller.

CARSON: Same problem in an earlier form. But I don't think the language was quite worn out yet by then. I was more worn out with the "Odyssey" than it was with the "Iliad." I mean, just comparing those two - you can see how it's changing, how the language of the "Iliad" is somehow monstrously¹⁶ new - and that language of the "Odyssey" is more comfortable, even for us.

And that process has continued. Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened¹⁷ down, more and more blunt - less and less sharp and biting into you.

SIMON: And you write in a way to kind of sharpen our language and liven it a bit?

CARSON: Well, that would be the hope. Yeah, with every sentence, there is that attempt to make something new happen inside, moving from this word to that word.

SIMON: You write every day?

CARSON: Yeah, I do. I love it.

SIMON: What do you love about it?

CARSON: Just making the letters. I never really got over the fun of making letters. Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don't anymore. But I still enjoy it - just the physical act and all the - the whole business of making a thing out of language.

SIMON: Anne Carson - her book of poems, essays and insights - "Float." I'm so glad you could be with us.

CARSON: Thank you very much.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 excerpts   

n.摘录，摘要( excerpt的名词复数 )；节选（音乐，电影）片段

参考例句：

• Some excerpts from a Renaissance mass are spatchcocked into Gluck's pallid Don Juan music. 一些文艺复光时期的弥撒的选节被不适当地加入到了格鲁克平淡无味的唐璜音乐中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is editing together excerpts of some of his films. 他正在将自己制作的一些电影的片断进行剪辑合成。 来自辞典例句

3 shuffled   

v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼

参考例句：

• He shuffled across the room to the window. 他拖着脚走到房间那头的窗户跟前。
• Simon shuffled awkwardly towards them. 西蒙笨拙地拖着脚朝他们走去。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

5 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

6 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

7 collaborator   

n.合作者，协作者

参考例句：

• I need a collaborator to help me. 我需要个人跟我合作，帮我的忙。
• His collaborator, Hooke, was of a different opinion. 他的合作者霍克持有不同的看法。

8 trajectory   

n.弹道，轨道

参考例句：

• It is not difficult to sketch the subsequent trajectory.很容易描绘出它们最终的轨迹。
• The path followed by a projectile is called its trajectory.抛物体所循的路径称为它的轨道。

9 itinerant   

adj.巡回的；流动的

参考例句：

• He is starting itinerant performance all over the world.他正在世界各地巡回演出。
• There is a general debate nowadays about the problem of itinerant workers.目前，针对流动工人的问题展开了普遍的争论。

10 ego   

n.自我，自己，自尊

参考例句：

• He is absolute ego in all thing.在所有的事情上他都绝对自我。
• She has been on an ego trip since she sang on television.她上电视台唱过歌之后就一直自吹自擂。

11 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

12 bard   

n.吟游诗人

参考例句：

• I'll use my bard song to help you concentrate!我会用我的吟游诗人歌曲帮你集中精神！
• I find him,the wandering grey bard.我发现了正在徘徊的衰老游唱诗人。

13 odyssey   

n.长途冒险旅行；一连串的冒险

参考例句：

• The march to Travnik was the final stretch of a 16-hour odyssey.去特拉夫尼克的这段路是长达16小时艰险旅行的最后一程。
• His odyssey of passion, friendship,love,and revenge was now finished.他的热情、友谊、爱情和复仇的漫长历程，到此结束了。

14 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

15 epic   

n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的

参考例句：

• I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗，而写了这个小故事。
• They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。

16 monstrously   

参考例句：

• There is a class of men in Bristol monstrously prejudiced against Blandly. 布里斯托尔有那么一帮人为此恨透了布兰德利。
• You are monstrously audacious, how dare you misappropriate public funds? 你真是狗胆包天，公家的钱也敢挪用？

17 flattened   

[医]（水）平扁的，弄平的

参考例句：

• She flattened her nose and lips against the window. 她把鼻子和嘴唇紧贴着窗户。
• I flattened myself against the wall to let them pass. 我身体紧靠着墙让他们通过。