SOURCE: Rae, Ian. “‘Dazzling Hybrids’: The Poetry of Anne Carson.” Canadian Literature, no. 166 (autumn 2000): 17-41.

In the following essay, Rae examines Carson's reworking of ancient mythology in Autobiography of Red and argues that the volume is particularly effective due to Carson's series of “literary allusions that intertwines ancient and modern, masculine and feminine, Greek and Quechua, Egyptian and Canadian” influences.

The subtitle of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse only hints at the variety of genres that the Montreal poet employs. In Autobiography of Red, Carson brings together seven distinct sections—a “proemium” (6) or preface on the Greek poet Stesichoros, translated fragments of Stesichoros's Geryoneis, three appendices on the blinding of Stesichoros by Helen, a long romance-in-verse recasting Stesichoros's Geryoneis as a contemporary gay love affair, and a mock-interview with the “choir-master”—each with its own style and story to tell. Carson finds fresh combinations...