Plainwater Essays and Poetry by Anne Carson

Some books you read in a sitting. Others you linger with. This one belongs to the second kind.

Here is a collection of essays and poetry that stretches the boundaries of language and form. Michael Ondaatje called its author “the most exciting poet writing in English today,” and a few pages in, you’ll see why. The pieces are succinct and astonishingly beautiful, and they set the classical world beside the modern one.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet
• Miniature lectures on subjects as different as orchids and Ovid
• The muse of a fifteenth-century painter, attending a phenomenology conference in Italy
• Verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns
• A pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive, intimate anthropology of water

It’s part poem, part essay, and part something you haven’t quite met before. The rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry meet the wandering curiosity of the essay. The result dazzles with invention and rewards you with real erudition, without ever feeling stuffy.

It’s a lovely fit for readers of literary fiction, American poetry, and essays, and for anyone who likes a book that surprises them. Keep it on the nightstand and dip in and out. Or carry it down to the water and read a few pages with the sea air around you.

This new hardcover is the kind of discovery we love to put in a reader’s hands here at the shop, nestled between the poetry shelves and the creaky floorboards. Come browse, or let us bring it to you.

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