SOURCE: Corngold, Stanley. Review of Economy of the Unlost, by Anne Carson. Modernism/Modernity 7, no. 2 (April 2000): 322-24.

In the following review, Corngold describes Carson as “a continental treasure” and praises Economy of the Unlost as a marvelous collection of diverse poetic essays.

I wrote a book on general literary aesthetics called Complex Pleasure, and if there was ever an example in the high sense of the word of such a thing, it is this magnificent and lovely essay by Anne Carson. I dare to include myself because Carson begins by arguing generally and by example the inescapable subjectivity of writing. In her arresting image, writing is a clearing and sorting of your own windowless room; and to pretend such writing as hers was made “out there,” “in the landscape of science and fact where people converse logically and exchange judgments,” is just “a notion” (vii). (With “clearing” she...