There are different gradations of personhood in different poems. Some of them seem far away from me and some up close, and the up-close ones generally don't say what I want them to say. And that's true of the persona in the poem who's lamenting this as a fact of a certain stage of life. But it's also true of me as me.
Anne CarsonTo be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.
Anne CarsonMyths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.
Anne CarsonAll human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.
Anne Carson