Description

Wrong Norma is Anne Carson’s first book of original material in eight years

‘Effortlessly readable and – a word critics don’t often use about her – fun’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘I’m a big fan… She pinpoints the collision of oracle and anachronism’ TEJU COLE

As with her most recent publications, Wrong Norma is a facsimile edition of the original hand-designed book, drawn and annotated by the author. Several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like the New Yorker and the Paris Review.

Anne Carson is probably our most celebrated living poet, winner of countless awards and routinely tipped for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Famously reticent, asking that her books be published without cover copy, she has agreed to say this:

Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantanamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget’s Thesaurus, my Dad, Saturday night, Sokrates, writing sonnets, forensics, encounters with lovers, the word “idea”, the feet of Jesus, and Russian thugs. The pieces are not linked. That’s why I’ve called them “wrong”.

Publisher Review

I'm a big fan of her work... There's a joy in encountering a mind that takes nothing for granted... She pinpoints the collision of oracle and anachronism -- Teju Cole, author of Tremor She is one of the few writers writing in English that I would read anything she wrote -- Susan Sontag, author of Against Interpretation Carson applies the habits of classical scholarship, the linguistic rigor, the relentless search for evidence, the jigsaw approach to scattered facts, to the trivia of contemporary private life * New York Magazine * Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today -- Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient Her work is full of moments of startling originality and beauty. The poems play with character and plot, myth and magic; they are rich with attitude and wit and the undertow of grief. If she was a prose writer she would instantly be recognised as a genius -- Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn I haven't discovered any writing in years that's so marvelously disturbing. I just feel so happy that she's around -- Alice Munro, author of Dear Life