What are we experiencing when we wait? And how can long poems teach us endurance and patience?
Even though the Canadian poet, scholar, and translator Anne Carson is perceived as one of the most important writers of our time, there are few in-depth studies of her oeuvre. Emma Helene Heggdal’s dissertation examines Carson’s three long poems “The Glass Essay” (1995), Autobiography of Red (1998), and Nox (2010), and presents a new reading of Carson’s poetic project while also developing new ways to understand time in long poems.
The dissertation uses waiting as an entry-point to exploring how the long poems work with time. Through the concept of “poetic endurance” the study collects experiences of waiting, both for the poetic personae and for the readers of the poems. The poetic personae wait in different ways – in the wake of a break-up, for one’s identity to take form, and during a time that is inescapably tied to a brother’s death. Waiting entails temporal experiences that lack progression and goal-orientation, qualities we expect time to have ordinarily. Long poems are particularly apt at conveying such experiences. They force us to read slowly and attentively and to test our patience by making us wait for something that might never happen.
Heggdal argues that waiting is a challenging but important art, and that artworks such as Carson’s long poems can train us in this art. To wait and to read long poems can challenge how we relate to time and make us aware of how time is shared.
Emma Helene Heggdal successfully defended her dissertation on February 3, 2023.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "Multiple Temporalities in the Contemporary Long Poem"
Evaluation committee
Professor Christine Wiesenthal, University of Alberta (first opponent)
Professor Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia (second opponent)
Professor Christian Refsum, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
Professor Anne Birgitte Rønning
Supervisors
Professor Marit Grøtta, University of Oslo
Professor Lynn Keller, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Associate Professor Bruce Barnhart, University of Oslo