''The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos'' is a 2001 collection of poetry by

Anne Carson Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the Unit ...

that won her the

T. S. Eliot Prize The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize that was, for many years, awarded by the Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Priz ...

Summary

''The Beauty of the Husband'' includes narrative verse that describes erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a doomed marriage. A tango (like a marriage) is something you have to dance to the end. The essay traces the development from adolescent fixation to post-divorce adult fixation, and begins when the main character's mother insists that the male subject is not to be trusted. The grandfather of the male subject mentions that under no circumstances should she marry his grandson, whom he calls "tragikos" – a word meaning either tragic or goat. The decades-long doomed relationship that follows features betrayal, adultery, separation, and sensuality, and is marked by prophecy, disillusionment, and poignancy. Carson's essay is a powerful, moving, and often wryly amusing exploration of how people become the victims of desires they cannot control. The 29 "tangos" are titled and numbered sections of long lines which alternate with much shorter lines to suggest the movements of

tango Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...

dancers. There is also a thirtieth entry by the husband. The essay is dedicated to

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

, "for his general surrender to beauty." In his "

Ode on a Grecian Urn "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in ''Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819'' (see 1820 in poetry)''.'' The poem is one of the " Great Odes of 1819", which a ...

", Keats concludes that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Each section in the essay begins with a quote from Keats, and the collection as a whole is framed by his aphorism "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty". Carson, though an accomplished and celebrated writer, has previously mentioned that at heart she considers herself a visual, not verbal, artist. She has noted that she feels books never fully exhaust her ideas. Love and beauty are some of the concepts explored in different ways by Carson in several of her works. She also translates and teaches Ancient Greek.

Reception

''The Beauty of the Husband'' won Carson the

on her third consecutive nomination in 2001, making her the first woman to be awarded this honour. That same year, the book won the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize for Poetry, and the Quebec Writers' Federation Award – A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry. It was also a finalist for the 2002

Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...

Daphne Merkin Daphne Miriam Merkin (born in New York City) is an American literary critic, essayist and novelist. Merkin is a graduate of Barnard College and also attended Columbia University's graduate program in English literature. She began her career as ...

, writing for the ''

New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'', called Anne Carson "one of the great pasticheurs", and said of ''The Beauty of the Husband'': "I don’t think there has been a book since Robert Lowell's ''

Life Studies ''Life Studies'' is the fourth book of poems by Robert Lowell. Most critics (including Helen Vendler, Steven Gould Axelrod, Adam Kirsch, and others) consider it one of Lowell's most important books, and the Academy of American Poets named it one ...

'' that has advanced the art of poetry quite as radically as Anne Carson is in the process of doing".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, The 2001 poetry books Alfred A. Knopf books Canadian poetry collections T. S. Eliot Prize-winning works