Like Bronte, whose storied alienation and seclusion comprise much of the poem's focus, the speaker identifies deeply with the moor's landscape. It is in Carson's skill for weaving Emily Bronte's persona together with the speaker's, however, that 'The Glass Essay's' abundant despair becomes most compelling. From where are they 'reaching' the speaker? The reader is left to imagine and savor. Drops of rain become 'longings from a great distance' but, at the same time, the origin of these longings remains mysterious. In 'The Glass Essay,' she resorts to this device immediately and often:Īlready, in just three short lines of the 38-page poem's fourth stanza, we encounter loneliness, landscape and season, distinctly echoing past triumphs such as 'The Life of Towns,' as in 'Town of Spring Once Again,' for instance:ĭespite the periods, the enjambment of these lines is obvious and startling. Where Dickinson used dashes to reveal the full power of a particular word or line, Carson resorts to an unusual frequency of periods, creating abrupt shifts of focus that help the poem encompass as much subject as possible within just a few sparse lines. While experimental verse often risks feeling contrived or convoluted, Anne Carson's ambitious voice builds on accomplishments of previous works such as 'The Life of Towns' - always feeling genuine and purposeful, yielding moments of intense irony, rhythm and blade-sharp line breaks facilitated by Carson's idiosyncratic punctuation.Īside from grammatical and linguistic devices, though, another successful experiment is Carson's capacity for engaging in biography and autobiography simultaneously in 'The Glass Essay,' as Emily Bronte's life becomes a mirror for the speaker's own predicament and contributes an additional layer of complexity and pathos.

Anne carson glass