Anne Carson, the celebrated Canadian-American poet, essayist and classical translator, is notoriously reticent about her work. She agreed to just these three sentences appearing on the cover of her first book in eight years:
Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantanamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget’s Thesaurus, my dad, Saturday night. The pieces are not linked. That’s why I’ve called them wrong.
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Not only does this suggest the range of subjects explored but also Carson’s idiosyncratic, playful humour. Of course there are links between the pieces, and of course they are anything but wrong.
Wrong-footed by the blurb, it’s thrillingly difficult to find one’s balance on opening the book. The title page presents us with ‘wrong norma’ written twice in Carson’s handwriting, once upside down. It’s clear we’re entering a topsy-turvy world where we don’t know what to expect.
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