Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera

FROM ANNE CARSON, WINNER OF THE 2026 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

An “exhilarating” collection of remarkably eclectic forms, “full of marvelous insights” (The New York Review of Books) into the making and unmaking of a self

“One of the most interesting gatherings of material that any poet has published within living memory.”—The Economist

Simone Weil described “decreation” as “undoing the creature in us”—an undoing of self. In this characteristically brilliant collection, Anne Carson explores this idea with a tantalizing range of reference, moving from Aphrodite to Antonioni, Demosthenes to Annie Dillard, Telemachos to Trotsky, and writing in forms as varied as opera libretto, screenplay, poem, oratorio, essay, shot list, and rapture. As she makes her way through these forms she slowly dismantles them, and in doing so seeks to move through the self, to its undoing.