Autobiography of Red Anne Carson

So it's a love story.

Stesichoros (650 BC) "came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet" Carson says in the introduction to Autobiography. Here, she praises Stesichoros for inventing the adjective, those "latches of being." So only fragments of Stesichoros' epic poem Geryoneis remain, "as if Stesichoros had composed a substantial narrative poem then ripped it to pieces and buried the pieces in a box with some song lyrics and lecture notes and scraps of meat."

So Carson puts the pieces together, meat and all, into a love story between Geryon, a winged monster, who lived in " The Red Place" until Herakles (his lover) came across the sea and killed him to get his cattle. Yeah, I know it don't sound too appealing, but I dug it. Several things:

:: Geryon was a photographer. This was interesting.
:: The story is framed at a translation. I like this.
:: It's just so damned beautiful sometimes.