Wednesday March 26 2008 at the 92nd St Y. A two-part reading, of all unpublished poems (I think. I thought I had all of them, and I hadn't read these).

First part: CASSANDRA FLOATCAN. A poem on translation. Anne Carson stood at the podium and read. Cassandra - the problem of prophecy - does she float and how can she. Veils. The problem of translating Euripides. The untranslatable cry of grief uttered in Greek by a Trojan woman, which begins with syllables that sound something like "atatatoi..." Then, spaces slated for demolition. Lunch. Cathedrals. As she read, slowly about half a dozen members of the audience crept up and retrieved posters from the stage. They walked up and down the aisles displaying these posters, as architectural photographs flashed on a screen overhead. At some point we realize these are all works by Gordon Matta-Clark.

Second part: POSSESSIVE USED AS DRINK(ME): A Lecture on Pronouns in the Form of 15 Sonnets. On stage right, a table, like those used by panelists at a conference, with three glasses of water. Two women and Anne Carson sit down. Stage left has two dancers and Robert Currie sitting at a laptop silently. Anne Carson begins to recite the poems, but at some points her mouth doesn't move. One realizes that the sonnets are at least partially recorded. Then the other two women start chiming in at points with her. At times they are singing. At times there are definitely more than three voices. As the reading goes on the dancers dance silently on the center stage, and images of other dancers are projected overhead. By the final sonnet, which was supposed to have been "Fashioned from the Foregoing 14 by Chance Operations," it is close to impossible to make out the actual words.

The fifteen sonnets are:

1. Triple Sonnet of the Plush Pony: Part I; Part II; Part III
2. Sonnet Isolate
3. Recipe
4. Sonnet of Addressing Gertrude Stein
5. Sonnet of Addressing God
6. Merce Sonnet
7. Sonnet of Addressing Oscar Wilde
8. Deictic Quiz Sonnet: Parts I through VI
9. Drop't Sonnet
10. Sonnet of the Pronoun Event
11. Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences from the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Émile Benveniste's Problems in General Linguistics (Paris 1966)
12. Reticent Sonnet
13. Sonnet of "We Tried Doing It Without The Cue Sheet But Couldn't Remember What Color Referred To What Movement And What Had Been Done And What Was Left To Do"
14. Sonnet of the English-Made Cabinet with Drawers (in prose)
15. Crowning Sonnet (Fashioned from the Foregoing 14 by Chance Operations)

Awesomely, the program also contained one of the sonnets:

say

1. hooray!!! everyone go see adriana’s take on the anne carson reading which has a lot more detail on what’s being translated, and links to youtube videos of some of the performances! – M.
   —    08.04.02, 10:58am    #

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