Summary

"By Chance the Cycladic People" is another of Carson's list-based chapbooks. It is narrated from an undisclosed third person point of view, and is comprised of a number of entries, each of which concerns the Cycladic Peoples, an Early Bronze Age culture "based on emmer wheat, wild barley, sheep, pigs and tuna speared from small boats." It is unclear why Carson uses the Cycladics as a point of reference; likewise, it is unclear why she titles the chapbook with the preface, "By Chance . . ." Yet regardless, the chapbook is filled with a number of factual and sometimes non-factual points ("5.0. The Cycladic people were very fond of Proust" — this is impossible; the Cycladic people predate proust by many, many years), each of which appears alongside a decimal-based numeric. The first point, for example, reads, "9.4. They put stones in the eye sockets. Upper-class...