"each idea [has] a certain shape, [and when] I found the word morphe it was to me just the right word for that, unlike "shape" in English which falls a bit short, morphe in Greek means the plastic contours that an idea has inside all your senses when you grasp it for the first time, the first moment, and it always seemed to me that a work should play out that same contour in its form…[2] I can't start writing something down until I get a sense of that morphe, and then it unfolds — I wouldn't say naturally — but it unfolds, by keeping only to the contours of that form." (radio excerpt)

"That is, Nox is not only about reading. It's about the way meaning unfolds in investigating the origins of remembrances and the definitions of the words that frame the experience, in associating the speculative with the definitive. [Anne] Carson creates meaning through layers of curated intersections — text-text, text-graphic, graphic-graphic ...

In the text itself, however, one way Carson builds the complex of this remembrance is by linking the Latin definition to the content on the right side. ... Her inventions most often introduce 'night' into the scope of the Latin word, creating a sotto voce thread, a low-murmuring voice that carries the title's theme (nox is Latin for night). For example, with interea (in the meantime, meanwhile), she adds "against the law yet only at night.” With et (and what is more, too, also), she adds "and do you still doubt that consciousness vanishes at night?" With mutam (inarticulate or making no sound): "there was a better reason for not writing."

Lorraine Martinuik's review of

Anne Carson

Nox

via Jacket2