Point of View

The book is narrated in the first person by its poet and subject, Maggie Nelson. The poem is submerged in her interiority so that no other characters in her life have any voice except what she chooses to impart by quoting or storytelling. The perspective is entirely self-reflexive: just as Nelson writes from and about herself, the poem speaks about its own writing and form. Nelson, as the speaker, frequently questions the purpose of the poem, its structure and style, and its influence on her life and the events the poem depicts.

In order to sustain this interiority and its crafted stream-of-consciousness style, Nelson uses parenthetical and italics passages to reflect on her own thinking, taking on multiple voices and personalities to tell her own story. She also uses italics instead of quotation marks when she is quoting dialogue from people in her life or...