Anne Carson
Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor.
Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the Unit ...
, which combines poetry, prose, and drama. Published in 2013, it resumes the story of her 1998
verse novel
A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there will usually be a large cast, multiple voic ...
''
Autobiography of Red
''Autobiography of Red'' (1998) is a verse novel by Anne Carson, based loosely on the myth of Geryon and the Tenth Labor of Herakles, especially on surviving fragments of the lyric poet Stesichorus' poem ''Geryoneis''.
Summary
''Autobiography of ...
''.
The characters of both poems are modern re-imaginings of the Greek mythological figures
Herakles
Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive ...
, as described in
Stesichoros
Stesichorus (; grc-gre, Στησίχορος, ''Stēsichoros''; c. 630 – 555 BC) was a Greek lyric poet native of today's Calabria (Southern Italy). He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres, and for some ancient traditions ab ...
' poem ''
Geryoneis
The "Geryoneis" is a fragmentary poem, written in Ancient Greek by the lyric poet Stesichorus. Composed in the 6th century BC, it narrates an episode from the Heracles myth in which the hero steals the cattle of Geryon, a three-bodied monster w ...
''. Stesichoros' poem retells the tenth labour of Herakles, in which Herakles kills the monster Geryon, a winged red being, in order to steal his cattle. In ''Autobiography of Red'', Geryon was a teenage boy, artistic and
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...
, in love with the popular and charming Herakles. ''Red Doc>'' resumes their story as adults. Geryon is now known as G, and Herakles is referred to in the poem as Sad But Great after his return from war with
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a ...
. G and Sad go on a road trip with an artist named Ida to make their way to visit G's dying mother.
''Red Doc>'' was reviewed by Katryn Schulz as "greater than... the sum of its parts," successfully bringing together disparate elements:
::This is Carson's obsession, and her gift: to make meaning from the fragments we get, which are also ''all'' we get – of time, of the past, of each other. It doesn't last, of course; the arrow of gravity, like the arrow of time, points only in one direction. Still, for a moment, she gets it all to hang together up there, the joy made keener by the coming fall. Sad but great: In the end it seemed to me that Carson had found the proper name for everything – her character, this book, this life.Schulz, Katryn (2013). ''Red Shift''. ''New York'' magazine, 11 March 2013, pp 117–121.
''Red Doc>'' was awarded the 2014
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...