By Gwynne Dulaney, Staff Writer
On February 12, classicist, poet, essayist, and translator Anne Carson gave a phenomenal reading of a selection of her work to a packed audience at an event called “Sometimes It’s Necessary to State the Obvious,” hosted by Haverford College. Carson is a Canadian author and Classics professor that has taught at several universities including Princeton and McGill, and is currently traveling in order to share her work.
She is notable for her various essays and books, including “Eros the Bittersweet,” “Autobiography of Red,” and “Antigonick and Red Doc.” Her writing is influenced by a number of authors including Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Homer, and Sappho. She has also translated multiple texts from Greek and Latin, including “Electra,” “Fragments of Sappho,” and “An Oresteia.” For her work, she has been honored as an Guggenheim Fellow, a MacArthur Fellow, and a T. S. Eliot Prize winner.
The event was well attended, and the auditorium was filled 15 minutes before Carson arrived. Carson offered her selection of readings with dry wit and elegance. Her first selection, “Wildly Constant,” was performed with the help of fellow writer and husband Robert Currie, who entertained listeners by looping a piece of string around the room, the audience, and even Carson herself.
She included a wide range of her works, including selections from a prose based on the works of the Latin poet Catullus, an essay called “Christmas with Haegele,” and a series of “short talks,” that took approximately 30 seconds, including one interactive piece with the audience. Many of the works evolved from unique inspiration, including a poem concerning a dear friend of Carson’s seeking acknowledgment from the U.S. government for mistakenly demolishing a family member’s wedding party with a drone in “Fate, Federal Count, and the Moon.”
This event was one of several programs put on by the Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives for the project “Play, Media, Text: Making It Live.” The Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives is an effort to to create civic change through community and art in the Philadelphia area, with Haverford serving as a regional hub, according to the program’s website. The evening finished with refreshments and a book signing by Carson.
Photo credit: Claire Blood-Cheney
