Norma Jeane Baker of Troy

Anne Carson was born in Canada. Her many books of poetry and translation include Antigonick, Autobiography of Red, The Beauty of the Husband, Glass, Irony and God, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, Nox, and Wrong Norma (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry).

""This little grenade of a book is difficult to categorize. It's a performance piece and a treatise on war and beauty, reality and fakery, bombshell and bombing—with ancient Greek etymology lessons woven in to show us how the small and everyday becomes epic, and vice versa. Marilyn Monroe (neé Norma Jeane Baker) is fused here with Helen of Troy, and elements of both milieus—Homer and Hollywood—populate the narrative. It's easy to imagine the blunt beauty of Carson's language being spoken and sung on stage.""