Anne Carson and the Unknown Contemporary Perspectives on Poetic Experimentation

'Artistic creativity depends on an intuitive process of discovery that begins before knowledge and goes beyond intention. Anne Carson and the Unknown examines the diverse ways in which contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson engages with the unknown, both as a philosophical concept and as a creative approach. Bringing together diverse contemporary perspectives, ranging from the world of quantum physics to feminist literary criticism and media studies, this book examines how contemporary poets like Anne Carson continue to show the importance of the unknown in our turbulent age of global upheaval. This book takes Carson's unusual journey into the collapse of civilizations and knowledge, places her work in the context of a broader post-critical debate, and reads it as an engagement with radically formal classical studies, rooted in the etymological complexity of ancient Greek. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book delves into her works' ambiguous connections to trans experience and religion, the importance of the concept of cessation in psychoanalysis, and her use of figures such as Helen of Troy and Heracles. He also discusses the unknown as a visual mechanism in her recent creative collaboration with comic illustrator Rosanna Bruno. In doing so, Carson offers a necessary counter-vision both to the goals of Western scientific knowledge of predictability and rationality, and to the algorithmic certainties sought by today's dominant techno-engineering culture.