1. INTERVIEWER

    The other line, the one I persist in using as the title of the poem despite your efforts, “I want to be unbearable,” is one of the most startling lines you’ve ever written. I thought it was exact and expressive of you as a writer.

    …..

    CARSON

    That’s good, though being unbearable hardly ever leads to that kind of group merriment. It’s a more solitary activity. But I don’t actually know what it is to be unbearable. I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they’re both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that’s almost happening, never quite totally happening.


    INTERVIEWER

    A kind of glare.

    CARSON

    Yes, a glare from behind the set where I’m standing. So if I’m a little actor on stage, there’s this terrible glare coming from behind me. And they feel that. And I don’t have to feel it, but I’m aware of it going past me towards them, and I see dismay on their faces mixed with this other thing. I think that’s why sometimes I am spooky to people. Because this glare is mixed with an infantile charm that disarms, so they have to deal with both.

    INTERVIEWER

    But what is that glare?

    CARSON

    I don’t know. It’s just absolute dread. It’s bumping up against the fact that you die alone. You think about that from time to time all through life, and it continues to make no sense against all the little efforts you make in your life to be happy and have friends and pass the time.

    INTERVIEWER

    Does everybody carry that glare around with them, or is it just more evident behind you?

    CARSON

    I think everybody can have access to it, only they mask it for themselves in different ways. I have fewer ways to mask it for some reason.

    –

    This was the interview that started it all.

    Anne Carson is definitely my favorite poet.

    The actual poem is as follows (mind, the special spacing and typography she uses isn’t present):

    Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions

    It’s good to be neuter.
    I want to have meaningless legs.
    There are things unbearable.
    One can evade them a long time.
    Then you die.

    The oceans remind me
    of your room.
    There are things unbearable.
    Scorns, princes, this little size
    of dying.

    My personal poetry is failure.
    I do not want to be a person
    I want to be unbearable.
    Lover to lover, the greenness of love.
    Cool, cooling.

    Earth bears no such plant.
    Who does not end up
    a female impersonator?
    Drink all the sex there is.
    Still die.

    I tempt you.
    I blush.
    There are things unbearable.
    Legs, alas.
    Legs die.

    Rocking themselves down,
    crazy slow,
    some ballet term for it- fragment of foil, little
    spin, little drunk, little do, little oh, alas.

    5 months ago  /  8 notes

    1. ash-panic posted this