Men in the Off Hours

Following her widely acclaimed <b><i>Autobiography of Red</i></b> ("A spellbinding achievement" --Susan Sontag), a new collection of poetry and prose that displays Anne Carson's signature mixture of opposites--the classic and the modern, cinema and print, narrative and verse.<br><br><br>In <b><i>Men in the Off Hours</i></b>, Carson reinvents figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, and Audubon. She views the writings of Sappho, St. Augustine, and Catullus through a modern lens. She sets up startling juxtapositions (Lazarus among video paraphernalia; Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war). And in a final prose poem, she meditates on the recent death of her mother. <br><br><br>With its quiet, acute spirituality, its fearless wit and sensuality, and its joyful understanding that "the fact of the matter for humans is imperfection," <b><i>Men in the</i> <i>Off Hours</i></b> shows us "the most exciting poet writing in English today" (Michael Ondaatje) at her best.