Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction

Work from 1970 to the Present

Lex Williford, Michael Martone

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781416545118
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more. Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970.Contributers include: Jo Ann Beard, Wendell Berry, Eula Biss, Mary Clearman Blew, Charles Bowden, Janet Burroway, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Anne Carson, Bernard Cooper, Michael W. Cox, Annie Dillard, Mark Doty, Brian Doyle, Tony Earley, Anthony Farrington, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Diane Glancy, Lucy Grealy, William Harrison, Robin Hemley, Adam Hochschild, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Ted Kooser, Sara Levine, E.J. Levy, Phillip Lopate, Barry Lopez, Thomas Lynch, Lee Martin, Rebecca McCLanahan, Erin McGraw, John McPhee, Brenda Miller, Dinty W. Moore, Kathleen Norris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lia Purpura, Richard Rhodes, Bill Roorbach, David Sedaris, Richard Selzer, Sue William Silverman, Floyd Skloot, Lauren Slater, Cheryl Strayed, Amy Tan, Ryan Van Meter, David Foster Wallace, and Joy Williams.

Anne Carson

THE GLASS ESSAY

ANNE CARSON, twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the 1996 Lannan Award, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. In 2001 she received the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Griffin Poetry Prize. She teaches at the University of Michigan.

I

I can hear little clicks inside my dream.

Night drips its silver tap

down the back.

At 4 A.M. I wake. Thinking

of the man who

left in September.

His name was Law.

My face in the bathroom mirror

has white streaks down it.

I rinse the face and return to bed.

Tomorrow I am going to visit my mother

SHE

She lives on a moor in the north.

She lives alone.

Spring opens like a blade there.

I travel all day on trains and bring a lot of books—

some for my mother, some for me

including The Collected Works of Emily Brontë.

This is my favourite author.

Also my main fear, which I mean to confront.

Whenever I visit my mother

I feel I am turning into Emily Brontë,

my lonely life around me like a moor,

my ungainly body stumping over the mud flats with a look of

transformation

that dies when I come in the kitchen door.

What meat is it, Emily, we need?

THREE

Three silent women at the kitchen table.

My mother’s kitchen is dark and small but out the window

there is the moor, paralyzed with ice.

It extends as far as the eye can see

over flat miles to a solid unlit white sky.

Mother and I are chewing lettuce carefully.

The kitchen wall clock emits a ragged low buzz that jumps

once a minute over the twelve.

I have Emily p. 216 propped open on the sugarbowl

but am covertly watching my mother.

A thousand questions hit my eyes from the inside.

My mother is studying her lettuce.

I turn to p. 217.

“In my flight through the kitchen I knocked over Hareton

who was hanging a litter of puppies

from a chairback in the doorway. . . .”

It is as if we have all been lowered into an atmosphere of glass.

Now and then a remark trails through the glass.

Taxes on the back lot. Not a good melon,

too early for melons.

Hairdresser in town found God, closes shop every Tuesday.

Mice in the teatowel drawer again.

Little pellets. Chew off

the corners of the napkins, if they knew

what paper napkins cost nowadays.

Rain tonight.

Rain tomorrow.

That volcano in the Philippines at it again. What’s her name

Anderson died no not Shirley

the opera singer. Negress.

Cancer.

Not eating your garnish, you don’t like pimento?

Out the window I can see dead leaves ticking over the flatland

and dregs of snow scarred by pine filth.

At the middle of the moor

where the ground goes down into a depression,

the ice has begun to unclench.

Black open water comes

curdling up like anger. My mother speaks suddenly.

That psychotherapy’s not doing you much good is it?

You aren’t getting over him.

My mother has a way of summing things up.

She never liked Law much

but she liked the idea of me having a man and getting on with life.

Well he’s a taker and you’re a giver I hope it works out,

was all she said after she met him.

Give and take were just words to me

at the time. I had not been in love before.

It was like a wheel rolling downhill.

But early this morning while mother slept

and I was downstairs reading the part in Wuthering Heights

where Heathcliff clings at the lattice in the storm sobbing

Come in! Come in! to the ghost of his heart’s darling,

I fell on my knees on the rug and sobbed too.

She knows how to hang puppies,

that Emily.

It isn’t like taking an aspirin you know, I answer feebly.

Dr. Haw says grief is a long process.

She frowns. What does it accomplish

all that raking up the past?

Oh—I spread my hands—

I prevail! I look her in the eye.

She grins. Yes you do.

WHACHER

Whacher,

Emily’s habitual spelling of this word,

has caused confusion.

For example

in the first line of the poem printed Tell me, whether, is it winter?

in the Shakespeare Head edition.

But whacher is what she wrote.

Whacher is what she was.

She whached God and humans and moor wind and open night.

She whached eyes, stars, inside, outside, actual weather.

She whached the bars of time, which broke.

She whached the poor core of the world,

wide open.

To be a whacher is not a choice.

There is nowhere to get away from it,

no ledge to climb up to—like a swimmer

who walks out of the water a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Jo Ann Beard: The Fourth State of Matter
• Wendell Berry: Getting Along with Nature
• Eula Biss: The Pain Scale
• Mary Clearman Blew: The Unwanted Child
• Charles Bowden: Torch Song
• Janet Burroway: Embalming Mom
• Kelly Grey Carlisle: Physical Evidence
• Anne Carson: The Glass Essay
• Bernard Cooper: Burl’s
• Michael W. Cox: Visitor
• Annie Dillard: Living Like Weasels
• Mark Doty: Return to Sender
• Brian Doyle: Leap
• Tony Earley: Somehow Form a Family
• Anthony Farrington: Kissing
• Harrison Candelaria Fletcher: The Beautiful City of Tirzah
• Diane Glancy: Sun Dance
• Lucy Grealy: Mirrorings
• William Harrison: Present Tense Africa
• Robin Hemley: Reading History to My Mother
• Adam Hochschild: World on a Hilltop
• Jamaica Kincaid: A Small Place
• Barbara Kingsolver: High Tide in Tucson
• Ted Kooser: Small Rooms in Time
• Sara Levine: The Essayist Is Sorry for Your Loss
• E. J. Levy: Mastering the Art of French Cooking
• Phillip Lopate: Portrait of My Body
• Barry Lopez: Flight
• Thomas Lynch: The Undertaking
• Lee Martin: Sorry
• Rebecca McClanahan: Interstellar
• Erin McGraw: Bad Eyes
• John McPhee: The Search for Marvin Gardens
• Brenda Miller: The Date
• Dinty W. Moore: Son of Mr. Green Jeans
• Kathleen Norris: Celibate Passion
• Naomi Shihab Nye: This Is Not Who We Are
• Lia Purpura: Autopsy Report
• Richard Rhodes: Watching the Animals
• Bill Roorbach: Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine
• David Sedaris: Repeat After Me
• Richard Selzer: Imelda
• Sue William Silverman: The Pat Boone Fan Club
• Floyd Skloot: A Measure of Acceptance
• Lauren Slater: Black Swans
• Cheryl Strayed: The Love of My Life
• Amy Tan: Mother Tongue
• Ryan Van Meter: If You Knew Then What I Know Now
• David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster
• Joy Williams: Hawk
• About the Editors
• Copyright