It sometimes strikes me, when I am in the swimming pool watching the great mute alternating agon of arms and bathing caps, how each person's swimming stroke has the style of that person. The way a hand flips down into water each time a swimmer performs, say, a stroke of front crawl gives you essential information about them — about the angle at which their soul is turned and how they use, are used by, life. Everything else that person does – cook dinner, kiss, write, sweep the floor, go mad – will contain the same little flip. There is something both vast and pitiful about this fact.

Anne Carson, “Water, Still”, in Answer Scars, as part of Roni Horn’s Wonderwater / Alice Offshore

- Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red.

“Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.”   ― Oscar Wilde

1,3. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | 2.Anne Carson, Euripides | 4.Malcolm T. Liepke | 5.@i-wrotethisforme | 6,9,11,14.Hanya Yanagihara | 7.Arnold Lobel | 8.E. M. Forster | 10.Peter Wever | 12.Joseph Lorusso | 13.Ocean Vuong

Trista Mateer, "Baggage", from Honeybee

mary maclane, the story of mary maclane / pierre bonnard - jeune femme écrivant, 1908 / louise fitzhugh, harriet the spy / phil grey - two photos from will self’s writing room: a 360 degree view in 71 photos, 2007 / tom astor - susie boyt’s notebooks, 2018 / stephen king, on writing / jill krementz - stephen king at his home office with his corgi marlowe, 1995 / joan didion - “on keeping a notebook” / wayne miller - author and poet maya angelou, 1974 / photo of sylvia plath from the everett collection / anne carson in a 2016 interview with NPR / octavia butler’s motivational notes to self / jim carroll, the basketball diaries / benjamin garcia - writing painting, 2012 / wayne pascal - writer’s block, 2019 / louisa may alcott, little women / little women (2019) / mary shelley (2017) / dickinson (2019) / anne lamott, bird by bird

on writing

“i was written by a man” “i was written by a woman” i was written by sophocles and then translated by anne carson

Sappho - Translation from Anne Carson’s “If not, Winter”

Euripides, from Grief Lessons: Four Plays; translated by Anne Carson

Text ID: Gods are stubborn. So am I.

“little beast” richard siken / “samson” regina spektor / “fatima and manoubia” by alexandre roubtzoff / “break my heart” joy harjo / sappho trans. anne carson / “ginger and olive oil” by moju manuli

Glass, Irony & God, ‘The Glass Essay’ by Anne Carson

[ID: Girls are cruelest to themselves.]

Yes before now I have been a boy and a girl            and a bush and a bird and a languageless fish in the sea.               (Empedokles, fragment 117) His ego has lived through all the moments of mortal history, he says, and remembers them. Laying its soft paws on the grass. Dipping her shining hand in the water. Coming to the cave. Bristling its quills. Weeping at the strangeness of the place. Pounded through by desire. Squeezing out a dab of paint. Skimming the wave. Putting blood to his lips. Knocking the lantern against the turnstile. Kissing. Wailing. Robbing. Exhaling. Drawing a line in the sand. Remembers them all.

Anne Carson, “Pronouns Detain Me”, in Answer Scars, as part of Roni Horn’s Wonderwater / Alice Offshore

this is my favourite poem

IN LOVING YOU I EAT MY HEART; IN LOVING ME YOU EAT MINE

Mary Renault, The Persian Boy Stephen Crane, ‘In the Desert’ Grace Moloney, bite the hands that feed me Yves Olade, Bloodsport Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem Edvard Munch, Two Heart (detail), 1899 Philippe de Champaigne, Saint Augustine (detail), 1650 Dante Alighieri, Vita Nova, trans. Mark Musa Red Dragon (2002), dir. Brett Ratner Margaret Atwood, ‘Two-Headed Poems’

When Anne Carson said "I feel so lonely, like childhood again." and when Ryan O'Connell said "I don't want to have to be the one who mourns everything when everyone else has clearly forgotten. It's mortifying. It's mortifying to be the one who remembers." and when Gregory Orr said "Childhood dotted with bodies. Let them go, let them be ghosts. 'No,' I said, 'make them stay, make them stone.'"

the autobiography of red, anne carson // the hours, michael cunningham // autobiography of my hungers, eduardo c. corral // the embrace, ron hicks // to myself, ron hicks // desire, years and years // how to live safely in a science fictional universe, charles yu // birds hover the trampled field, richard siken //  romantic soul, ron hicks // ego, m. roosevelt & mitski

Anne Carson, from “Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions.”

anne carson, plainwater: essays and poetry / raw (2016) / lara williams, supper club / nathan biehl - cover photograph for nightbitch, 2020 / noah b by michiyo yanagihara for metalmagazine.eu 2016 / stella lucia by bettina rheims for dazed magazine 2017 / kim sang in by j. dukhwa for ceci korea june 2016 / jenefer shute, life-size / guillermo lorca garcia-huidobro - the banquet, 2013-14 / alex lemon, another last day / samantha margherita - stem peels & pits collaboration with stephanie gonot, 2019 / anonymous - tantalus, 17th c. / ovid tr. henry t. riley, the story of erysichthon from metamorphoses / queen of the damned (2002) / jennifer’s body (2009) / margaret atwood, you are happy

hunger and rage

Anne Carson, Plainwater

Sophokles, from Elektra; translated by Anne Carson in An Oresteia

Text ID: Do I not live? Badly, I know, but I live.