Glass, Irony, and God
Reviews
glass, irony and god by anne carson isn’t just a book it’s like feeling lonely next to someone who knows exactly how to fall apart beautifully. in “the glass essay,” i feel like i was pulled into the mind of someone grieving a love while pacing across the moors and having silent conversations with emily brontë. there’s this cold, quiet grief that doesn’t beg for attention but stays with me like fog on skin. it’s vulnerable without asking for pity, just showing what it means to be entirely raw
the rest of the collection slips between scripture and heartbreak, philosophy and ache. “book of isaiah” makes god feel like someone distant but deeply watching, not out of love, but necessity. anne doesn’t try to comfort she hands pieces of broken thought and says, here, look closely. everything feels sharp and sacred at once. reading it is like holding a cracked mirror up to my own face and not looking away
Staring at the wall, pondering, losing my mind, etc. etc.
Came for “The Glass Essay” and stayed for the rest.
‘desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, i no longer gather what falls.’
sorry 4 being a normie but The Glass Essay might be my favorite poem <3
Highlights
Soul is the place,
stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind,
where such necessity grinds itself out.
Soul is what I kept watch on all that night.
Law stayed with me.
We lay on top of the covers as if it weren't really a night of sleep and
time,
caressing and singing to one another in our made-up language
like the children we used to be.
That was a night that centred Heaven and Hell,
What is the holiness of the citizen?
It is to open
a day
to a stranger,
who has no day
of his own.
XI of “The Fall of Rome: A Traveler’s Guide”
It is stunning, it is a moment like no other,
when one's lover comes in and says I do not love you anymore.
“The Glass Essay”
I am interested in anger.
I clamber along to find the source.
“The Glass Essay”
Goblins, devils and death stream behind me.
“The Glass Essay”
Well there are many ways of being held prisoner,
I am thinking as I stride over the moor.
As a rule after lunch mother has a nap
and I go out to walk.
The bare blue trees and bleached wooden sky of April
carve into me with knives of light.
Something inside it reminds me of childhood—
it is the light of the stalled time after lunch
when clocks tick.
and hearts shut
and fathers leave to go back to work
and mothers stand at the kitchen sink pondering
something they never tell.
“The Glass Essay”
This book appears on the shelf Romance
This book appears on the shelf Top bookshelf tbr
This book appears on the shelf Fucked up
