For two decades her work has moved–phrase by phrase, line by line, project by improbable project–in directions that a human brain would never naturally move. The approach has won her awards, accolades, and an electric reputation in the literary world.
— Sam Anderson, The New York Times Magazine
Here in paperback is Anne Carson’s stunning translation of Sophokles’s luminous and disturbing tragedy, given entirely fresh language and new life
Anne Carson has published translations of the ancient Greek poets Sappho, Simonides, Aiskhylos, Sophokles and Euripides. Antigonick is her seminal work. Sophokles’ luminous and disturbing tragedy is here given an entirely fresh language and presentation. This paperback edition includes a new preface by the author, “Dear Antigone.”
"Carson is nothing less than brilliant―unfalteringly sharp indiction, audacious, and judicious in taking liberties."
― Publishers Weekly
"Reading Anne Carson is to experience aeuphonious, mystical sort of perplexity."
― Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
"She reaches past the contemporary moment to craft her unique and universal voice, one that is both as ancient as Sappho and intimidatingly modern."
― Washington Square News
"People who don’t read poetry read Anne Carson."
― Deborah Landau
"She is one of the few writers writing in English that I would read anything she wrote."
― Susan Sontag
"It is a cry of grief posed in question form, emphatic, handwritten, excessive and abbreviated and, in this sense, a measured scream that gives us some sense of who or what lives on when it is all too late."
― Judith Butler, Public Books
"Her poetry is light, swift, and beautiful."
― The New Yorker
"The reader, the listener is provoked and challenged to the utmost."
― The Times Literary Supplement
"
A beautiful, bewildering book, wondrous and a bit scary to behold, that gives a reader much to think about without making it clear how she should feel.
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― Slate
"Ms. Carson does more than just update the language and quicken the pacing–she rewrites the play, mines its subtleties, its absurdity and its strangely comic timing and manages to produce a unique text out of a story that goes back much further than the fifth century when Sophocles wrote his version."
― The Guardian
"Carson's poetry convinces. Carson's work is irrepressibly modern and provoking."
― The Oxonian Review
"Stone's illustrations and the hand-lettered text make Antigonick a beautiful object."
― livemint.com & The Wall Street Journal
"Antigonick is as much a re-telling as it is a testament to the importance of Antigone in Western art, of re-tellings, and of refiguring narrative."
― Critical Mob
"Her poetry is expressionistic (you see this in Antigonick), shot through with a spiritual turbulence and an almost violent sensitivity to experience, and the barbed edges of her lines can send shocks through you."
― Full Stop
"In Carson's hands, this small, familiar Greek volume takes on a thunderously fresh rhythm, a satisfying blend of poetry and prose."
― KGB Bar Lit Magazine
"Her poetry at it's best, like Antigone's character, is a thrilling combination of hot-blooded instinct and dispassionate resolve."
― National Post
"The experiment's a fascinating one, and this interesting, risk-taking book is unignorable."
― The Independent
