Wounds bring both pain and a promise of change.
A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.
If all the lamps in the house were turned out
you could dress this wound
by what shines from it.—Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband
Mesmerised by Carson’s Autobiography of Red and Red Doc>, I embarked on a more ambitious journey through her world of verse-novels. This blurb warned of complexity:
The Beauty Of The Husband is an essay on Keats’s idea that beauty is truth, and is also the story of a marriage. It is told in 29 tangos. A tango (like a marriage) is something you have to dance to the end.
If tackling page one was an act of faith in myself, then moving from page one to page two was an act of faith in the author and in her ability to write an “enjoyable” book on marriage, starting with the words A wound. Petty grievances and family drama make for hard reading.
But reality TV this is not. In fact, Carson’s book is the smoothest ninety-minute read.
Of the 145 pages most are nearly blank—the usual sparsity of verse counterbalances the density of its internal images—so it’s easy to breeze through visually.
The consequences of the content are another matter (which is personal).
The writing lessons to be drawn, yet another (which I’ll share).
But first: what of tangos, what of Keats?
A Quiver Of Quotes 