In her poems collection "The Truth about God"[1], published in 1995 as part of her work "Glass, Irony and God"[2], Carson gives an insight on her view of God. She shatters his untouchable divinity and makes him vulnerable, almost humanly fragile. For Carson, there seems to be a duality concerning God, consisting of the supernatural on one hand, and the banal, sometimes even vulgar on the other.
The collection consists of 18 short poems, none of them written in verse, but mainly subdivided into stanzas of 3 lines each. There are only 5 exceptions to this rule, more precisely in "The God Fit" (p. 40), "The God Coup" (p. 41), "God's Beloveds Remain True" (p. 47), "God's Mother" (p. 48) and "God's List of Liquids" (p. 52). Both in "God's Mother" and "God's List of Liquids", the formal differences seem to hint on the idea of structure and order. Both poems contain a list, which could be interpreted as an allusion to God's habit to organise, to set up a framework or even a divine master plan. "The God Fit" ends in one single line, "The God Coup" is a four line poem and "God's Beloveds Remain True" is not subdivided into stanzas at all. The underlying connection between these three poems is the desperation that lies in feeling abandoned by God. People try "to escape God who is burning" (p. 40, l. 6) while they feel "untended" (p. 40, l. 7). He is described as "a grand heart cut" (p. 41, l. 1) and while "man surges" (p.41, l. 2), he does nothing more than "tarry" (p. 41, l. 4). In contrast to the descriptive address of "The God Fit" and "The God Coup", the voice of mankind expresses itself in "God's Beloveds Remain True", bewailing the status quo. The irony of feeling helpless and forsaken while "Chaos overshadows" (p. 47, l. 1) and not having the option to leave God behind because they "have been instructed to call this His love" (p. 47, l. 29) clarifies the forlorn position of God's beloveds. The term "beloveds" itself bears a sarcastic undertone when the speaker tells about them being "strangled by bitter light" (p. 47, l. 3), even "slit and drained out" (p. 47, l. 20). "The God Fit", "The God Coup" and "God's Beloveds Remain True" form a trilogy of misery, leading from God's infernal terror over God's indifference regarding mankind to God's tyrannical leave-no-options policy.
Another aspect of God is discussed in "God's Woman" (p. 46) and "God Stiff" (p. 46). These two poems ostensibly deal with the role of women in the process of creation. God asks "His woman" (p. 46, l. 1) whether she is "angry at nature" (p. 46, l. 1) without making clear what exactly he means by the term "nature".
The woman replies that she does "not want nature stuck / up between" (p. 46, l. 2f) her "legs on" (p. 46, l. 3) his "pink baton" (p. 46, l. 3). Furthermore, she does not want it "ladled out like geography whenever" (p. 46, l. 4) his "buckle needs a lick" (p. 46, l. 5). The image of God suddenly undergoes a change from supernatural fiend without a cause to a sexist male creator, who formed man after his image but forgot about the humiliating position of women in creation altogether. The idea of devising a reproduction process in which one (the male) has to penetrate the other (the female) in order to soil the female body with the actual semen and, thus, secure the species' population is portrayed as unnecessary and degrading. His possibly uttered excuse does not convince the woman of the necessity of the human spawning procedure and God is cornered with the question "what do you mean Creation" (p. 46, l. 6). This negative image is underlined in "God Stiff" by the fact that for the woman, "His zipper going down" (p. 46, l. 6) sounds like the word "Treachery" (p. 46, l. 6). If God really created man after his image, all negative and sexist behavior patterns of men must originate from God himself. He is part and root of all sexist male behavior.
The portrayal of God is completed in "God's Justice" (p. 49) when the reader is told that "in the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks" (p. 49, l. 1). One of those days was reserved for God to create justice, but instead "God got involved in making a dragonfly" (p. 49, l. 3). Watching his new creation, he "lost track of time" (p. 49, l. 4) and completely forgot about his actual plan to bring justice to the world. In deep fascination, God beholds the dragonfly, every little detail catches his eye and his attention. He is described as the stereotype human male who just found a new toy, be it some sort of electronic entertainment device or some other trivial matter. All his effort and all his devotion rests with something that can, objective, be seen as far less important than e.g. the concept of justice, yet there is no Sign of God being about to take notice of this antagonism. He is characterized as being rather unreliable, and assuming that there are at least 2 million[3] different species of animals on this planet to fascinate him, expectations for justice to be created are sure to be disappointed.
