Carson's The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangoes (2001) uses a collection of poems to explore her ambiguous feelings about a troubled and adulterous marriage.

Carson's Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1995) examines loss and longing as they relate to both life and love. As in "New Rule," the book includes invented dialogue between the poet and others. Like most of her other works, these other characters are generally figures from history or mythology.

The unusual, artistic structure of "New Rule" is one of the poem's strongest features. However, Carson's structures look conventional compared to some of the fantastic poetic structures of e. e. cummings. E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962 (1994) includes all of the poet's works, which are arranged and displayed according to the poet's original directions.

The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change (2002), by Paul...