Anne Carson and the Charcoal Burners
For nine years now, I have been haunted by images from a poem by Anne Carson as enigmatic as they are unforgettable. Called Burners Go Raw, it opens with Carson’s nightmare vision of medieval charcoal burners’ forlorn, accursed existence.
Burners medieval dark mud on a road a dark morning/ falling back through memories a faint pain, dark uphill/ way the usual alone and gavel picking my step out where/ nothing, out hoping, hope sinking, slope rising, that dark/ colour, almost rain, a thing impending…