Described as “the most exciting poet writing in English today,” classical scholar and MacArthur Fellow Anne Carson comes to Emory to give the Museum’s 2010 Nix Mann Lecture on Thursday, January 28 at 7 pm. With her collaborator Robert Currie, Carson will perform two works: Cassandra Float Can, a work that links Aeschylus’s Cassandra, doomed to speak the truth and not be believed, with other witnesses to turbulent times including philosopher Edmund Husserl and the “anarchitect” Gordon Matta-Clark. She will also perform Bracko, selections from her translations of the fragmentary works of Sappho.
Carson’s works include The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (2001), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost (1999); Autobiography of Red (1998), shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize; Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1996); Glass, Irony and God (1995), shortlisted for the Forward Prize; and Goddesses and Wise Women (1992).
Her translations of ancient Greek works include If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2002), Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (2006), and An Oresteia, which includes three different versions of the tragedy of the house of Atreus (2009).
In addition to the MacArthur “Genius” award, Carson has received the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches Classics, Comparative Literature, and English at the University of Michigan. While on campus Dr. Carson will also conduct a collaborative creativity workshop for students.
In 1992, the architectural firm of Nix Mann and Associates (now Perkins and Will) generously endowed this lecture series to bring distinguished speakers to campus on an annual basis. Carson’s visit to Emory is co-sponsored by the Luminaries in the Arts and Humanities series of the Office of the Provost, the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and the Poetry Council.
Following Carson’s presentation, please stay for the kick off of the Poetry Council’s spring “What’s New in Poetry?” reading series, featuring guest poets Joanna Fuhrman, Stacey Lynn Brown, and Jenny Sadre-Orafai. The Poetry Council reading will begin at 8:30 pm.
