Rating: 
Summary: Touching, Brilliant, Philosophical Lyric
Review: Carson tells the story of a photographer, Red, from childhood through early adulthood. The bulk of the story is about Red's growing sense of himself as an artist, and his romance/friendship with the buoyant, self-assured, and devilishly handsome Hercules. Red's story is based on the myth of Geryon, a shephard killed by the mythical Hercules. Red fashions a fascinating life, and artistic response to life, from the "foul rag and bone shop" of his youth. In the same way, Carson rhapsodizes a touching lyric from extant shards of ancient poetry regarding Geryon. Carson is not afraid to address the deepest philosophical issues a few stanzas away from a description of the toddler Red playing with his "white trash" mother. (One challenging thought: Without mood we'd be continuous with the universe...only mood lets us sense we are in, but not of the world.) The story works on so many levels- the metaphor of Red's wings, for instance, representing the abnormality that both elevates and alienates him.... the image of the volcano, representing (oh, such an inadequate word for all the affinities, resonances, suggestiveness of her symbols!) libido, the natural order, all the inner depths and natural wonders we're afraid to explore. (I'm reminded of Stevens's Postcards from the Volcano...Carson's E. Dickinson epigraph on the topic is yet another light show of her learning.) I could go on an on. Anyway, I highly recommend the NY Times Magazine Story on Anne Carson (and W. Szymborska, if you get the chance!)
Rating:
Summary: Only If One Has Wings
Review: Classicist and poet, Anne Carson, has created a playful-but-tragic, present-tense, postmodern fable of obsessive love in her retelling of Stesichoros' "Geryoneis." For those unfamiliar with the classics, Stesichoros was a Sicilian Greek of the early classical era. Although little of his poetry has survived, we do know it was famous for both its extreme sweetness and its grandeur. In Carson's modern version of the Geryon myth, Herakles doesn't murder Geryon and steal his magic red cattle; he steals his heart instead. And in Carson's version, the theft of the heart may be quite a bit worse than outright murder, for, rather than dying outright, Geryon dies a little each day and his suffering is thus prolonged and made all the more difficult to endure. Since this is a present-tense, postmodern tale, Geryon doesn't, however, suffer in silence. He attempts, instead, as a young school boy (though still red and still winged--he presents his teacher with the myth of Geryon as his own autobiography), to create a new world and a new life for himself through his camera lens and through the redemptive qualities of his art. In this way, Geryon's demons are transformed through eroticism and become, if not something of beauty, then something that is, at least, worthwhile. Although this prose/poetry work is witty and playful, Carson's Geryon is still quite sad. Herakles is so definitely male and he loves Geryon in a stereotypically male manner, i.e., without really knowing the object of his love. Herakles seems out to have a good time and that is that. Although Geryon is red to his core, Herakles knows him so little that he even dreams of him in yellow. This upsets Geryon to the point of torment, who thinks, "Even in dreams he doesn't know me at all." One of the most interesting sections of this work occurs when Geryon, after some years, runs into Herakles (and his Peruvian lover, Ancash) in Buenos Aires. Herakles, Geryon and Ancash form a triangle that becomes a source of violence before it becomes a source of healing. Most interestingly, the village visited by this trio is a village of volcano-survivors who look upon Geryon and his red wings as godlike. But what I liked most about this section was Carson's amazing point and counterpoint. Her language is often profound, the language only the most poetic can write, yet in this section, especially, she juxtaposes that poeticism against the bizarre: a tango singer who just happens to be a psychoanalyst; a guerilla battle fought in the eye of a roast pig; and a surrealistic night flight over the peaks of the Andes with the passengers clutching toothbrushes and Herakles making love to Geryon under a blanket. Wow. Talk about creative. Carson pushes the medium of poetry beyond its conventional bounds and creates a profound meditation of loss, of rage, of sadness, of melancholy, of redemption...all seen through the camera lens of Geryon...and Eros. She filters love through photography, through sexual awakening, through volcanoes, through Emily Dickinsin and she does so in language that is tender, musical, funny, melancholy, witty, sensuous, poignant and downright brilliant. Is our beloved worth the pain? This is the question Carson seems to be asking in "Autobiography of Red." The answer might well be: Only if one has wings.
Rating: 
Summary: Canada's Got It Goin On
Review: Her lines don't make sense and the story kinda peeters out at the end, but Anne Carson's knack for the odd and mysterious in everyday life is like no one else's. Read it for the language, if nothing else!
Rating:
Summary: Canada's Got It Goin On
Review: Her lines don't make sense and the story kinda peeters out at the end, but Anne Carson's knack for the odd and mysterious in everyday life is like no one else's. Read it for the language, if nothing else!
Rating: 
Summary: Anne Carson speaks for me in a language I do not possess
Review: Her words and stories are so poignant that I find myself saying, over and over again, that I could have, myself, written it. . . if only I had the immeasureable skill and talent which she is fortunate enough to have. We can all relate to her lines, in some capacity, in our own lives if we have ever loved anyone or anything - including this glorious language she uses in such a profound and exciting way.
Rating:
Summary: Red Meat filling your mouth hard to chew but tastes good
Review: I am intrigued by the way Carson takes a classical myth and plays with it in ways that we are all familar with-- both in the form of the long poem (Eliot) and the novel (Joyce). Carson, however, twists and teases both forms into an accesible yet stimulating hybrid. There is none of the annoying pretension that is so common among intellectuals, yet Carson's intelligence is not compromised. This novel, while keeping the "shimmering immediacy" attributed to more simplistic poets (In this case, Billy Collins) is immediate in a more challenging sense. As a reader, I am drawn into the text and romanced by vivid pairings of adjectives, yet I am not allowed to put away the novel and forget these images. Carson, like her predessor Stesichoros, has a "passion for substances" that brings this retelling into a sharp and clear focus, much like the photographs Geryon takes. At the same time, as she forces us to examine the surface, the familar images deconstruct.
Rating:
Summary: keeping the seasons in perspective
Review: i read this book for the first time in january of 1999...i had searched everywhere for it after reading about it in time magazine, and when i got ahold of it i was hooked by the first page, on geryon, on anne carson, on red... in the past year i have returned to this book again and again..it has helped me through moves and other upheavals, and reading other work by carson makes me want to drop everything and dedicate myself to learning ancient greek. this is the most compelling, troubling, and comforting book i've read...well ever. if given the chance, this book shines in so many arenas...and whether or not it's prose isn't important.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!
Review: It's gorgeous. A wonderful book of poetry that will enrapture anyone who picks it up! Highly Recommend!
Rating:
Summary: i have stones in my pockets
Review: my friend Ryan sent me this book saying something like, "I heard Anne Carson read and fell in love on the spot." and i trust Ryan's opinion. _Autobiography of Red_ is honest, and that's what draws you in. my friend ben called it 'intoxicating', and i think that's about right. i found myself thinking about Geryon as i was walking to class in the morning. i wanted to know if he was going to be... well, just that. but it's sad, too, and it made me walk more slowly for a while. it made my mind heavy. this book is one that you will finish and then sit there and look at the cover and think. you'll think about love and pain and death and wings. you'll remember empty fruit bowls. it's amazing. now, go read it. please. Ryan was right again, as always.
Rating:
Summary: A very witty, elusive book
Review: One realizes great learning went into making this compressed though long-limbed poem about desire and being different/young/a victim/an artist/a god. The introductory sections on Stesychorus and the fragmentary record of his poem are alone worth the price of the book--ironic and playful and melancholy all at once. And it has a great ending.
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