On Anne Carson--critical book chapters by Jennifer K Dick

It is a nonstop celebration to have Anne Carson finally be given the wonderful Nobel Prize. Her work merits this accolade for a zillion reasons, which everyone is busy enumerating. My personal journey with her works began when I read "Kinds of Water" in the Haymarket Café in Northampton, MA when I was 18 years old. And when in 2010 I was hired in Mulhouse, France, I began teaching her works off and on until, about 10 years ago, it became a constant for my L3 students to study 3 of her books (varying which) at the Université de Haute Alsace in Mulhouse, where the library also ordered and carries a wonderful collection of Carson's work. 

I never tire of rereading, re-exploring, re-reflecting on her works. But as a critic it has taken me time to go from overall excitement and curiosity to acquire a more mature, critical distanced perspective capable of relating how I am experiencing the writing. Thus, as a critic, my reflections on her vary from the critical-personal (the chapter in Wilkinson's book) to the recent chapters which I think provide new paths to reflect on how one might approach reading Carson. I hope readers might find thse have something to contribute to the scholarship and reading of Carson as everyone begins to reflect and write more and more deeply on her. 

The strongest chapter I have composed on her work appears in the now ready for pre-order volume available at University of Michigan Press. Here is a small list of my book chapters on Carson, and where you can procure a copy of the books they appear in:

1) 2026: Jennifer K Dick, “De-Stabilizing the Known / Restoring the Unknown: Reading Anne Carson through the Lens of Quantum Physics”, in Anne Carson and the Unknown: Contemporary Perspectives on Poetic Experimentation, Edited by Helena Van Praet and Christine Wiesenthal. University of Michigan Press, December 2026: available for pre-order HERE. (image at top of post)

2) 2022: Dick, Jennifer K. “The Dissenting Red Self: Lyn Hejinian's Tribunal, Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red & Bhanu Kapil's Incubation: A Space for Monsters” in Couleurs et Cultures / Colors and Cultures: Interdisciplinary Explorations edited by Sami Ludwig, Astrid Starck-Adler and André Karliczek. ISBN: 978-3-00-073026-9. (364 p), pp. 143-152. Available on Amazon HERE

3)  2016:  Jennifer K Dick: "Circles and Lines  / Limits and Extentions : The Kinetic Conflicts Inherent in Anne Carson’s The Life of Towns and Wassily Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane", Point, Dot, Period… The Dynamics of Punctuation in Text and Image, dir. Pascale Tollance and Laurence Petit. Cambridge Scholars, UK (215p.), pp. 48-68. Hardback ISBN: 1-4438-8806-0 ebook ISBN13: 978-1-4438-9234-6 available HERE

 

 

 4)  2015: Jennifer K Dick, “The Pilgrim and The Antropologist” [on Anne Carson's "Kinds of Water"] in Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson, University of Michigan Press, Paperback : 9780472052530, Hardcover : 9780472072538, Ebook : 9780472120901, January 2015. https://press.umich.edu/Books/A/Anne-Carson2 (230p), pp 63-68. Available HERE

 

 

Where you can find me: readings, organization, art!

Dear all, you are invited! 

 

I will be celebrating a lot of writing by others in the coming weeks, but also am touched to be reading along with translators of my own work and to be celebrating my own new publications. So, where to find me, and what events not to miss! 

7 Oct 2pm During the Perception and Intermediality conference, Sandrine Wymann and I will present our long series Ecrire l'Art. Then I (Jennifer K Dick) will be READING from "THE ANNEALING" (forthcoming chapbook, Dancing Girl Press) alongside Ecrire l'Art residents Eric Houser and Jérôme Game and followed by a performance by Laura Mullen (visiting US author and translator) MULHOUSE UHA, Campus ILLBERG, FLSH salle Ganjavi at 2pm. Welcome one and all! The Perception and Intermediality From the Renaissance to Now will involve 18 speakers, 3 organizers, many many helping hands and wonderful questions from the audience. Read abstracts and more on the blog: HERE

 11 Oct 3:33pm. Doors open at 2. Celebrate the launch of this year's collaboratively orchestrated and written and designed chapbook the THREES (3). With the authors-makers of this book and a find 3-ingrediant cocktail to go with! Barbara Beck, Jennifer K Dick, Lisa Pasold and Michelle Notebook invite you to come and pick up a copy of this new DoItYourself Edition work, focused on this year's numeric mystery: THREE. 60 rue des Poissonniers 75018. Ring logement 3 to get in. Bring a bottle or nibble to share! M° Marcadet-Poissonniers 

 17 Oct To celebrate the newest issue of Po&sie, the maison de la poésie de Paris invites a selection of readings and conversations. Jennifer K Dick's series "The Island" (l'île) from her book That Which I Touch Has No Name (Black Spring Press Group, London, 2022) appears in a new translation by Virginie Poitrasson and Lénaïg Cariou. And they will be sharing some of these prose poems about Greece and Skala Erressos as we head, alas, away from the season of beaches and towards the season of... snow? At La Maison de la Poésie, but you must RESERVE HERE

18 Oct 17h IVY Writers Paris has a wonderful late afternoon/early Sunday evening multilingual event in store for you: French author and anglophone scholar and scribbler Olivier Brossard will share some new work from his amazing recent POL publication. Romanian writer Ioana Badicioiu, who is focused on the liminal spaces between English, Italian and Romanian, will be coming here from Italy to share her work with us for the first time in Paris! Finally, well known Libyan-New Yorker Khaled Mattawa on a visit to Montpellier this week as well will be sharing their work and adding into the mix of multilingualism the questions of where memory, culture and narrative intersect. I will be there as organizer and MC, and cannot wait to also close this reading with a little discussion about how cross-lingualism, sound slippages, multiple tongues come to connect and clash in these author's work and minds. CAFE DELAVILLE, 34 bvd Bonne Nouvelle, 75010 Paris M° Bonne Nouvelle For more, see our IVY BLOG HERE

 

And soon I will begin organizing events to celebrate the recent publication (now out!) of my book SHELF BREAK by Jennifer K Dick (order HERE directly from BlazeVox, NYC, or on Amazon, too). Events are getting scheduled for late fall in PARIS, France, over winter I hope to do an event in Iowa and maybe Chicago, then in the spring I will be reading in Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, England, Germany, France, Brussels and Spain: Next summer I hope to see you on the highways and byways of the states--reading from this and my chapbook The Annealing (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press, Chicago). And if you want to invite me into your class, your bookstore, your local bar, your living room, please, yes, I would love to come read for and with you! 

Until then, you can buy a copy, :) get copies for friends for Christmas, make your students get copies, and support BlazeVox Press!)