Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red (Vintage, 1999), fourth and final selection

Here is my last selection of favourite passages from this outstanding book:


...fifty red parrots dove and roared
like a conscious waterfall.

*

The Pacific at night is red
and gives off a soot of desire.

from "XXXVII. Eyewitnesses"

Enormous pools of a moment kept opening around his hands

each time he tried to move them.

from "XL. Photographs: Origin of Time"

...a light so brilliant it feels cold and hot at once.

from "XLI. Photographs: Jeats"

In the photograph the face of

Herakles is white. It is the face

of an old man. It is a photograph of the future, thought Geryon months later when he

was standing in his darkroom

looking down at the acid bath and watching likeness come groping out of the bones.

from "XLV. Photographs: Like and Not Like"

This is a memory of our

beauty.

from "XLVI. Photographs: #1748"

We are amazing beings,

Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.

And now time is rushing towards them

where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,

night at their back.

from "XLVII. The Flashes in Which a Man

Possesses Himself"

In the UK, you can buy Autobiography of Red from Hive here.