Glass, Irony, and God Anne Carson

There are three things I know about Anne Carson:

- She is the size and strength of a thumbnail.
- The air that she takes into her mouth has a weight that can only be explained in her third book.
- Her knowledge is like the knowledge that someone has of their own elbows: half-seen.

The glass is predictably cold. The kind you heave your whole weight onto. The windows are not windows exactly, but books that you browse, flicking ticks of frost from the words. Softness unrolls on the other side, in the back flap, after you open and close it for many years. So you press your thumb on the glass. That makes the shape of an eye. Then you press your hand on the glass. A bird appears. You lift your shirt and try to stamp your entire chest, but someone comes to you, says 'stop while you're ahead.'