“As [Anne] Carson said in her interview with Kevin McNielly:

Using words so that you create a surface that leaves an impression in the mind no matter what the words mean. It’s not about the meaning of each individual word adding up to a proposition; it’s about the way they interact with each other as daubs of meaning, you know as impressionist colors interact, daubs of paint, and you stand back and see a story emerge from the way that the things are placed next to each other. You can also do that with language. (“Gifts and Questions” 20)”

excerpted from: “This Breaking Where Red Things Wade”: Textual Hybridity in Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red and Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, by Madeline Oatman