Economy of the Unlost: (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan) »

"This is a remarkable, gripping, and moving book, itself a kind of extended prose poem, crafted by Carson between the excerpts of the two poets and her amazing readings and juxtapositions thereof. Like all of Carson's writing, it is sui generis, combining meticulous scholarship with the sensibility and style of a poet. I have always felt it was a privilege simply to be allowed to read Carson's work, and this manuscript is perhaps the best thing she has done."--Leslie Kurke, University of California, Berkeley

Toronto Globe and Mail - Carl Wilson

In Economy of the Unlost...Carson explains that Simonides, a Greek in the fifth century BC, was perhaps the first poet to charge money for his services, notably for his epitaphs; Celan, a Jew who wrote in German, struggled with the bankruptcy of language after the Holocaust, until his suicide in 1970. Carson's question, then, is what words are really worth. Anything? Her typically canny final sentence is, "Yes and No." Poetry is a double-negative, she suggests, a way of "saying No to nothingness." What cannot be saved can perhaps be "unlost." (Her deft translations of the notoriously untranslatable Celan help underline the point.)