SOURCE: Knox, Bernard. “Under the Volcano.” New York Review of Books 45, no. 18 (19 November 1998): 57-60.

In the following review, Knox provides an overview of Carson's body of work and examines the author's inventive form and narrative verse in Autobiography of Red.

My letter to the Princeton University Press recommending Anne Carson's first book Eros the Bittersweet (it was published in 1986) contained the following sentences: “This is an extraordinary book—the book of a poet, a subtle critic, and a scholar. It is also a brilliant piece of writing, flawlessly phrased throughout, constantly surprising but never disappointing, and laced with a wit that is all the more effective because it is perfectly disciplined.” The book is a perceptive analysis of the Greek conception of Eros and of his role in Greek poetry, philosophy, and life. He is a winged creature and his invasion of his target's body causes the heart...