Still Life

February 17, 2020
The visually rich and contemplative posthumous collection from Carson, who died in October, draws from memory and ekphrasis, bringing to life works by Cezanne, Poussin, and Caillebotte, among others. Aware of his impending mortality, Carson uses memory to savor the present beauty of life on Earth. In “Claude Monet, Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil, 1880,” he considers a pot of daffodils upended by a vandal, reflecting on the endless names of colors and various names for flowers themselves, the “many/ shades of meaning” bestowed to language. The poem concludes: “It’s beautiful weather, the 30th of March, and tomorrow the/ clocks go forward./ How strange it is to be lying here listening to whatever it is/ is going on./ The days are getting longer now, however many of them I/ have left./ And the pencil I am writing this with, old as it is, will easily/ outlast their end.” In “Basil Blackshaw, Windows I-V, 2001,” the poet asks his wife “for the umpteenth time/ What you think about when you think of Blackshaw’s Windows,/ when I spy you/ Through the bay window tending to something in our/ minuscule front garden.” Celebrated paintings here serve as personal monuments. This beautiful collection offers a lasting, life-affirming tribute to human relationships, memory, and the shared experience of art.