Criticism and the Gift

Abstract This chapter is a study of the interpretive “conversation” at the center of Carson’s acclaimed (though not uncontroversial) comparative critical essay, Economy of the Unlost: (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan). Out of the Simonides/Celan exchange comes an inquiry into what is at risk for the poet writing poetry, but also, in Carson’s strong confessional identification with Celan, for the poet reading poetry and writing criticism. The chapter close-reads Carson’s richly imitative prosody in an essay whose interpretations are voiced, Coles argues, in a parallel exchange of poetic “gifts” between Carson and Celan. An adapted version of her Martin Classical Lectures, Carson’s extended essay is a complex case of performed reading, fusing personal aesthetic declaration, direct reader address, a reciprocal critical style, and one of the most striking confessions of what is at stake for Carson herself in the psychic economies of poetry.