Wrong Norma

2025 I met Anne Carson by reading her poetic essays, or poems-essays, and listening to her masterful performance of them. January this year, the LRB invited her as part of their winter lecture series and I felt sad not to be able to join. Maybe one day she’ll make it to Germany? Anyway, meeting Carson is a remarkable event in my reading biography. Wrong Norma has been described as a scrapbook, extended adolescent project, a place where one come to realize language cannot be trusted, and so on. I’d describe it as a text that engages with the world so intensely, without buying into it. Not everything is englobed in the public and political. There’s a lot of play and being oneself. Engagement and aloofness give Carson just what she needs to write us poem-essays.