Notes from Source: This is an originary study of the work of the Canadian poet Anne Carson. It attempts to respond to an injunction she once left in a book from our university library: follow the voice (iotamuepsilonnu ϕalphamualphazeta). The voice in Anne Carson is elusive and, as a violet in winter, likes to hide itself. In truth, it is often figured forth in the form of an absent presence. How does one follow a voice that is not there? By reading what is absent in what is present. By learning to attend to the traces that are left behind by that voice. Our thesis undertakes to read for these traces through a number of forms of attention. These include: the attention to the first work (a first work exhibits everything that is going to be written); the attention to the totality of the oeuvre (all the works of a writer coalesce under a presiding unity); the attention to the sidetext (manuscripts, abandoned works, letters, interviews, marginalia); the attention to source; the attention to the keytext, the attention to the countertext; the attention to compositional genesis; and the attention to mimetic activity. Anne Carson is a writer who trains you as you read. The following is an exercise in fractal analysis. It attempts to find in the parts of one primary text (the Canicula di Anna) structures and patterns repeating themselves at varying scales in the text under investigation as a whole and in the entire oeuvre. It is an organic and immanent form of criticism that moves from within one work and not from outside of it. It strives to read Anne Carson through Anne Carson. And to follow her voice and the chorus of voices echoing within that voice as it breathlessly discloses the desperate drama of being a self in song .

Further Notes: Book Title: She] She. ISBN: 9781369673449