Tumblr Poet Laureate

Critics of the Canadian poet Anne Carson tend to unduly fixate on her fame. “Is Anne Carson the first poet with more fans than readers?” posited one critic’s attempt at a takedown. (The answer, in accordance with Bettridge’s law of headlines, is no; Homer was obviously the first.) These qualms mostly have to do with the institutional praise that her “relentlessly cerebral” work has received. Carson is accused of being “all surface [and] no body.” Her formidable style, according to her harshest critics, is a formal excuse for not making any good sense.