Anne Carson is easily one of my favorite poets, and her latest work, Nox, in part a collaboration, is incredible. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s one of the most moving, beautiful books I’ve ever read already. It’s collaborative in that it is based in some ways off of Catullus 101, and the physical creation of the book was aided in large part by Robert Currie. The book follows Carson’s journals after the death of her estranged brother, and in order to reproduce the feeling of these journals, Currie has created an accordion of copies. The whole of it – the physical feel, the writing, the process of reading – is amazing.
I know I’ll have more to say about this collaboration once I’ve finished the book, but I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. If you want more immediately, this is an excellent video of Carson reading from the book at Poet’s House with some commentary from Currie about the production of the book, these are some great photos from a performance they ran at the University of Minnesota in 2009, and this is a wonderful collaborative poem from them in Paperbag.
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