Float Hardcover – October 25, 2016

I have to give it 5 stars for content, but I don't like the form of the book. Anne Carson’s reason for constructing Float in this manner—that the individual pieces aren’t linked thematically or stylistically as in her other books—isn’t convincing. To me the collection doesn’t appear any more random than any number of poetry collections, hers included. A typical collection of poetry consists of a selection of poems written by one author but all with individual characteristics. The individual poems are discrete little machines of words. Together they make a book. And the beauty of the book is that such an ordinary thing can contain these multitudinous wonders. That one book can contain both The Glass Essay and The Gender of Sound is what makes Glass, Irony and God so beautiful. They are no more connected, in my opinion, than By Chance the Cycladic People and Stacks. The Table of Contents in Float is a stand-alone piece of paper. The only reason to have one, it would seem, is to inventory the contents of the box. And that is how I found out that my copy was missing a piece. By Chance the Cycladic People is, it would seem, one incarnation of a large number of possible combinations. Why this one, fixed in place? The logic of Float would seem to ask that each unit of the piece stand alone on its own piece of paper, albeit within its own folder in the plastic case of Float. Ironically, the field of possibility that By Chance the Cycladic People seems to represent is stifled inside that plastic box. It does the opposite of what it would seem to intend, simply because of the logic of Float as a book. Float is both an unwieldy object and unattractive as a book. If the pieces were collected in a conventional container it would be a very beautiful book, for the fact remains that the individual pieces are as beautiful and worth reading as anything Anne Carson has written. Ironic, isn’t it? And I would pay for Float, all over again, just to have that book with a table of contents arranged alphabetically as the only indication necessary of the arbitrary.Should such a version of Float become available I would appreciate anyone reading this to leave a comment and let me know.

I admire Carson for so many things, and certainly her writing, but her formal innovation is what interests me the most. There's nothing else like this "book", at least that I've ever come across. Read FLOAT to feel free to do whatever you want as a poet. Each pamphlet/chapbook is an adventure in reading, in form, in exploding one's expectations of what can be done on the page or in a "collection."

The boxed portfolio format is not as innovative as the publisher & reviewers want you to believe. I own at least a dozen artist's books that come in a box, with interchangeable pages or parts, allowing readers to create any reading itinerary they choose. All that's revolutionary about this is that Carson's books get widely distributed (and deservedly) so a publisher like Knopf is willing to mass-produce this format. I've just received it, haven't read it yet, am sure I will love the content. It's just annoying that people pretend she is breaking new ground with the format. If you're interested in this, be sure to read Nox, her other book-in-box. It's a knockout.

Just finished the last treat in Anne Carson's Float, as the back note describes, "A collection of twenty-two chapbooks whose order is unfixed and whose topics are various./ Reading can be freefall.” and indeed it is, but the collection has a remarkable cohesiveness when read as a whole. These beautiful chapbooks contain all that we have come to expect from Carson, and much more. The Classicism, the precision of language, the unexpected, and clarity are all here as usual, as well as certain thematic motifs and obsessions (myth, Proust, Emily Bronte, the nature of language, genders, observation, seeing, saying, and sign). Many of the poems give us contemporary (wry?) perspectives of the given archetypal: from Zeus, Cassandra, Homer and other classical figures, to those of the very present. This book is a gift (alienable, per Carson) to all poetry lovers. Float is an essential addition to all serious collections.

Bought it has a gift for my sister inlaw. She loves it because she can read it in pieces. They are a bunch of short stories. She thanked me. I had forgotten I bought for her. So she was excited to get something after Christmas.

I'm not a big fan of gimmicks, and the whole apparatus here--plastic box, shuffle the works in any order you like, etc.--seems a bit old fashioned at this point in any case. But Anne Carson is a major writer whose works I have always greatly admired, and Float is as good as the best, the perfect combination of poetry and prose, profound inquiries based on deep scholarly investigations combined with specific autobiographical details. The material rises so far above the gimmicky that once again Carson's work can only be celebrated!

Sort of disorienting at times but this has always been the point. The first impression I got was of all those endless pamphlets at church cepf if they were written by Anne Carson and she became a priest using poetic logic.

I'm sorry, I found this to be way below expectations, not a literary piece per see to me. Maybe I'm a book in the hand sort of person, but several very small "chapbooks" just didn't make it for me, nor did the writing.