Will I love Nox?

I first met this book on the last visit Gary and I made to a beloved bookstore in Seattle. After he died, I remembered it and tracked it down. It is an accordion book, its folded pages nested in a sturdy box. It was made, Carson writes, as an epitaph for her brother.

Among the folds, we find ephemera evoking his memory, and hers: fragments of notes, torn photos, drawings, paintings, scribbles. Running through the pages—a portion appears on the left side of each spread—is Carson’s translation of a poem by the Latin poet Catullus, written after the death of… show more.

In Nox, Anne Carson delves into her complicated relationship with her brother and his death.

She writes, “No matter how I try to evoke the starry lad he was, it remains a plain, odd history. So I begin to think about history.” Carson offers us a collage of this history in an accordion book format which unravels page by page.

I have often unfolded the book across the room to interrogate the way she gathered the details of the experience. It feels so intimate to uncoil all the scraps and notes and pictures and pieces. Then, I fold it… show more.