Somehow I managed to overlook Anne Carson until recently I read Short Talks, originally published in 1992, and then republished in 1998 by Brick Books. A series of 45 prose passages, each a Short Talk On something, from Rain to Penal Servitude to Brigitte Bardot, it's one of those dense books of poetry whose substantiality belies its length. I keep reading it, backwards and forwards, and it keeps seeming new. Carson writes Stein-like without being at all derivative. She's absorbed Stein's influence and folded it into her own style. I always admire writers who can do that, it's a trememdous skill.

Two of my favourite passages:

Short Talk on Where to Travel

I went travelling to a wreck of a place. There were three gates standing ajar and a fence that broke off. It was not the wreck of anything else in particular. A place came there and crashed. After that it remained the wreck of a place. Light fell on it.

Short Talk on Van Gogh

The reason I drink is to understand the yellow sky the great yellow sky, said Van Gogh. When he looked at the world he saw the nails that attach colours to things and he saw that the nails were in pain.