The speaker

As noted in the plot summary, the speaker and the poet share certain biographical details (including their shared vocation and the name Sharon), and the confessional style of the collection suggests its autobiographical nature. That said, the reader cannot assume a complete coherence between the two figures, especially as the collection enforces the disparities between reality (itself a subjective experience) and representation. The speaker of Stag’s Leap begins the collection in the wake of a personal loss: that of her husband and her marriage. This trauma resounds through the book, extending to other, more general losses, including a miscarriage and the death of her aging parents.

However, rather than surrendering to weakness, victimhood, or submission, she instead inhabits a metapoetic position, commenting on her archival project as she enacts it, using pain to fuel her vision. The poems elegize, but also subvert gendered conventions in doing...