Great Regulars: So all the things that make Nox artistic--

the book-in-a-box design; the accordion; the crumpled, smeary, torn scraps of evidence; the word-by-word tour of Catullus' poem--lead us into the brother's life and the sister's loss, but don't really dwell on the sister's emotions. We feel them, all right, but we're not pushed to feel them. They arise as if the loss were ours. No preciousness here. There is--as in much of Carson's poetry--a classical distance from shattering sorrow. She says from the beginning she'll never really "capture" Michael: "No matter how I try to evoke the starry lad he was, it remains a plain, odd history."

from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Nox" is a moving book--and an art object

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