Summary

"Variations on the Right to Remain Silent" is the first essay in Float; it is narrated from the point of view of an ambiguous speaker who is likely Anne Carson, and it begins with an epigraph by John Cage, which reads: "Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it." The sentiment in this quotation by Cage summarizes Carson's chapbook in rather ambiguous language, for this is a chapbook concerned with translation, silence, and the difficult and often incomprehensible limitations of language.

"Variations" begins with a discussion of the two types of silence that impact the task of transposition for modern-day translators. These silences are: physical silence, that is a silence or absence that is literally evoked by or in a text, and metaphysical silence, which "happens inside words themselves." Physical silence is simple; it is...