ocean-furious, nettle-streaked

Posting Anne Carson for National Poetry Month is a daunting prospect. She is almost impossible to excerpt, and her books are gorgeous, complicated, baffling, referential, stunning collections of poetry and novel and essay, opera and screenplay, script and critical discourse -- sometimes (frequently) all at once. This is why I haven't posted Carson since I posted an excerpt of Autobiography of Red two years ago. I may post more of her Sappho translations, and some year I may say, "fuck it," and post at least part of The Glass Essay, but for now all I will say is that I really recommend her, because she is extraordinary. Here is a little one.

Searching for things sublime I walked up into the muddy windy big hills
behind the town where trees riot according to their own laws and

one may

observe so many methods of moving green—under, over, around, across,
up the back, higher, fanning, condensing, rifled, flat in the eyes, as if

pacing a

cell, like a litter of grand objects, minutely, absorbed, one leaf at a time,
ocean-furious, nettle-streaked, roping along, unmowed, fresh out of pools,

clear as Babel,

such a tower! scattered through the heart, green in the strong sense, dart-shook,
crownly, carrying the secrets of its own heightening on

up, juster than a shot, gloomier than Milton or even his king of terrors, idol in
its dark parts, as a word coined to mean "storm (of love)" or

"waving lines"

(architectural), scorned, clean, with blazing nostrils, not a
servant, not rapid, rapid.

—Anne Carson, 'And Reason Remains Undaunted' in "Sublimes" from Decreation, 2005.