SOURCE: Holinger, Richard. Review of Plainwater, by Anne Carson. Midwest Quarterly 38, no. 2 (winter 1997): 235-36.

In the following review, Holinger compliments Carson's unique skill with descriptive language in Plainwater.

In one of Plainwater's essays, Canadian Anne Carson writes, “I will do anything to avoid boredom. … You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough” (29). Allusions to Foucault, Heidegger, Husserl, and Hegel confirm her postmodern, deconstructive emphasis. The theme of water that floods each part lends credence to one's notion of seldom having a metaphysical floor to stand on, the aberrations of grammar, syntax, punctuation, and linear movement floating one weightless.

The sections “Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings” and “The Life of Towns” suspend conventional prosody and lack a cohesive subject. The verse ascribed to Mimnermos (7th century B.C.) and the brief poems depicting, ostensibly, different...