A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2024

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY

Published here in a stunning edition with images created by Carson, several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker and The Paris Review. As Carson writes: Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantánamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus, my Dad, Saturday night. The pieces are not linked. That's why I've called them 'wrong.'

Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today. --Michael Ondaatje

A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender. --The New York Times Book Review

A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday. --The Village Voice

Named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time by the Modern Library

Anne Carson's remarkable first book about the paradoxical nature of romantic love

Since it was first published, Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson's lyrical meditation on love in ancient Greek literature and philosophy, has established itself as a favorite among an unusually broad audience, including classicists, essayists, poets, and general readers. Beginning with the poet Sappho's invention of the word bittersweet to describe Eros, Carson's original and beautifully written book is a wide-ranging reflection on the conflicted nature of romantic love, which is both miserable and one of the greatest pleasures we have.

One of the most interesting gatherings of material that any poet has published within living memory. --The Economist

Simone Weil described decreation as undoing the creature in us -- an undoing of self. In her first collection in five years, Anne Carson explores this idea with characteristic brilliance and a tantalizing range of reference, moving from Aphrodite to Antonioni, Demosthenes to Annie Dillard, Telemachos to Trotsky, and writing in forms as varied as opera libretto, screenplay, poem, oratorio, essay, shot list, and rapture. As she makes her way through these forms she slowly dismantles them, and in doing so seeks to move through the self, to its undoing.

Cool, resolute, smart, and lovely.... Carson has emerged in the last two decades as a kind of prophet of the unknowable. --The Village Voice

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

A book about romantic love, Eros the Bittersweet is Anne Carson's exploration of the concept of eros in both classical philosophy and literature. Beginning with, It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her, Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view, creating a lyrical meditation in the tradition of William Carlos Williams's Spring and All and William H. Gass's On Being Blue.

Epigrammatic, witty, ironic, and endlessly entertaining, Eros is an utterly original book.

Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers miniature lectures on topics as varied as orchids and Ovid. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy. She constructs verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns, and takes us on a pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive and intimate anthropology of water. Blending the rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry with the discursive nature of the essay, the writings in Plainwater dazzle us with their invention and enlighten us with their erudition.

This clear-eyed, brutal, moving, darkly funny book tells a single story in an immediate, accessible voice-29 tangos of narrative verse that take us vividly through erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a long-time marriage that falls apart. Only award-winning poet Anne Carson could create a work that takes on the oldest of lyrical subjects-love-and make it this powerful, this fresh, this devastating.

In An Oresteia, the classicist Anne Carson combines three different versions of the tragedy of the house of Atreus -- A iskhylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra and Euripides' Orestes. After the murder of her daughter Iphigeneia by her husband, Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother's revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra's actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father's death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes is driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family. Condemned to death by the people of Argos, he and Elektra must justify their actions -- or flout society, justice and the gods.

Carson's translation combines contemporary language with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up this ancient tale of vengeance to a modern audience and revealing the essential wit and morbidity of the original plays.

**New York Magazine's Top 10 Books of 2013**
**GoodReads Reader's Choice Award Winner**

Some years ago I wrote a book about a boy named Geryon who was red and had wings and fell in love with Herakles. Recently I began to wonder what happened to them in later life. Red Doc> continues their adventures in a very different style and with changed names.

To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

Deluxe redesign of the two-time Griffin Award winner's first poetry collection. Includes new material.

On the occasion of the press's 40th anniversary, Brick Books is proud to present the first of six new editions of classic books from our back catalogue. This new edition of Short Talks features a foreword by the poet Margaret Christakos, a Short Talk on Afterwords by Carson herself, and a new cover and design by the renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst.

First issued in 1992, this is Carson's first and only collection of poems published with an independent Canadian press. It announced the arrival of a profound, elegiac and biting new voice. Short Talks can comfortably stand alongside Carson's other bestselling and award-winning works.

The youth at night would have himself driven around the scream. It lay in the middle of the city gazing back at him with its heat and rosepools of flesh. Terrific lava shone on his soul. He would ride and stare. - Short Talk on the Youth at Night

Praise for Short Talks: Short Talks is a unique form of slag-like poetic address that arises from the full formative force of Carson's young embodiment of a northern Ontario mining-town winter of mind. - Margaret Christakos, from the Introduction.

In Men in the Off Hours, Carson offers further proof of her tantalizing gifts. Reinventing figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, and Audubon, Carson sets up startling juxtapositions: Lazarus among video paraphernalia, Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war, Edward Hopper paintings illuminated by St. Augustine. And in a final prose poem, she meditates movingly on the recent death of her mother. With its quiet, acute spirituality and its fearless wit and sensuality, Men in the Off Hours shows us a fiercely individual poet at her best.

The ancient Greek lyric poet Simonides of Keos was the first poet in the Western tradition to take money for poetic composition. From this starting point, Anne Carson launches an exploration, poetic in its own right, of the idea of poetic economy. She offers a reading of certain of Simonides' texts and aligns these with writings of the modern Romanian poet Paul Celan, a Jew and survivor of the Holocaust, whose economies of language are notorious. Asking such questions as, What is lost when words are wasted? and Who profits when words are saved? Carson reveals the two poets' striking commonalities.

In Carson's view Simonides and Celan share a similar mentality or disposition toward the world, language and the work of the poet. Economy of the Unlost begins by showing how each of the two poets stands in a state of alienation between two worlds. In Simonides' case, the gift economy of fifth-century b.c. Greece was giving way to one based on money and commodities, while Celan's life spanned pre- and post-Holocaust worlds, and he himself, writing in German, became estranged from his native language. Carson goes on to consider various aspects of the two poets' techniques for coming to grips with the invisible through the visible world. A focus on the genre of the epitaph grants insights into the kinds of exchange the poets envision between the living and the dead. Assessing the impact on Simonidean composition of the material fact of inscription on stone, Carson suggests that a need for brevity influenced the exactitude and clarity of Simonides' style, and proposes a comparison with Celan's interest in the negative design of printmaking: both poets, though in different ways, employ a kind of negative image making, cutting away all that is superfluous. This book's juxtaposition of the two poets illuminates their differences--Simonides' fundamental faith in the power of the word, Celan's ultimate despair--as well as their similarities; it provides fertile ground for the virtuosic interplay of Carson's scholarship and her poetic sensibility.

This clear-eyed, brutal, moving, darkly funny book tells a single story in an immediate, accessible voice -- 29 tangos of narrative verse that take us vividly through erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a long-time marriage that falls apart. Only award-winning poet Anne Carson could create a work that takes on the oldest of lyrical subjects -- love -- and make it this powerful, this fresh, this devastating.

Sometimes the best of friends come from the unlikeliest of places, and from deep love, one gains courage--even enough to change an entire town including the lives of two recovering alcoholics and eight at-risk, over the edge, high school seniors. But how is that possible?

Ten-year-old Cody has spunk. He lives for finding his next adventure, whether it's playing basketball with the older kids or marveling the other kids with his card tricks. Cody's spirit never waivers even after he receives news of a terrible diagnosis, and the last thing he wants to be known as is the kid with cancer. But news travels fast in a small suburban town, and that's exactly what Cody becomes. That is, until he makes a new, unexpected friend. Tomato Man, as Cody calls him, is Cody's golden ticket to being cool again. While their quirky bond grows, the tomato vendor shows Cody all kinds of things: a hip hop dance routine, fashion trends that soon catch on with the whole school, and even rides on the back of Tomato Man's impressive motorcycle

Cody's friendship with Tomato Man takes on a new dimension when Cody bravely defends his friend from the town's real estate tycoon and the two become a longed for duo, even to those in the detention center, as they make rounds on the supercharged motorcycle, spreading good will and fresh vegetables. Then, tragedy suddenly strikes With a small town left reeling, can Cody and Tomato Man's legacy continue?

A beloved child dies of cancer. Will he be forgotten, or will his legacy help other young people build better lives, and bring hope and joy to a community? In Watch Keepers, Anne Carson has told a poignant story of love and healing. It will inspire readers of all ages, and--who knows?--perhaps encourage someone somewhere to create a watch-keepers program for his community. -Dee McRea, former Associate Editor, Associate for Reviews, Smithsonian Magazine

Watch Keepers is a beautiful blend of joy, adventure, sadness and hope. The characters have had quite an impact on me as they have inspired self-reflection as well as a sense of connection to their struggles and achievements. Watch Keepers is unique in that it is an appealing read for all ages -Melinda Ruppert, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, Mechanicsville, Maryland

As a librarian, I am often approached by parents seeking a book that will present positive role models for their children. Watch Keepers is a book that will keep young readers engaged by an interesting plot, absorbing characters and an inspiring message. Highly recommended. -Robert Gatton, Children's Librarian, Calvert County Public Library, Maryland

It is unusual to find a novel for young readers that helps them to understand themselves as individuals, family members and contributing members of the community. The Watch Keepers is a powerful antidote to the negative images that so often confront our children. The book does not flinch from presenting personal dilemmas and difficult situations, but ultimately shows the reader that it is possible to transcend difficulties through positive actions with their peers, through the guidance of compassionate adults. L. Steven Berns, LCSW-C, JD Psychotherapist, Solomons, Maryland

After reading the book, I had a new understanding of true friendship and the commitment it takes. I really enjoyed the book and found it encouraging to have such a young kid have the heart to do good for others. Cameron Barford, Ryken High School, Leonardtown, Maryland