SOURCE: Ward, David C. “Anne Carson: Addressing the Wound.” PN Review 27, no. 5 (May-June 2001): 13-16.

In the following essay, Ward criticizes the bulk of Carson's oeuvre as well as the scholars who have celebrated her work. However, Ward asserts that The Beauty of the Husband represents a breakthrough in Carson's development as a poet.

Here is Anna Akhmatova writing about herself in the Terror (in the ‘Epilogue’ of Requiem):

There I learned how faces fall apart, How fear looks out from under the eyelids, How deep are the hieroglyphics Cut by the suffering on people's cheeks. There I learned how silver can inherit The black, the ash-blond overnight, The smiles that fade from the poor spirit, Terror's dry coughing sound. 

Here is Anne Carson writing about Akhmatova in the Terror (in ‘Akhmatova Comes to the Wall’ in Men in the Off Hours (New York, 2000)):

She came to the wall...