Autobiography Of Red: Poem Analysis

Over the course of the semester, we read several hybrid genre books and some with hybrid themes. For the topic of my personal narrative, I settled on a subject near to my heart, the prospect of summer. To establish my theme of a blissful summer surrounded by nature, I implemented several elements from parts I and II of Jean Toomer’s Cane, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. The title of my narrative establishes the setting; it takes place in the summertime. I chose the adjective “emerald” because green is my favorite color and my narrative contains a lot of bright, chipper green throughout. The basis of Bluets is an obsession with a color, so my common theme of green in my narrative parallels this to a degree. The poem beneath the title is formatted like something from Cane. However, the content and voice is more similar to that of Bluets, more specifically, the use of first person and the personal conclusions made. The first body text is formatted based on a combination of Autobiography of Red and Cane. The dialogue is italicized instead of being traditionally placed in quotation marks. This technique is borrowed from Autobiography of Red. I like how the dialogue flows more naturally this way, and the distinction between who is speaking is a little ambiguous. For instance, in the

This is coupled with the content inspiration of male-female relationships also from the same work. For example, I use the similes “like a dog-ear on a page” and “like a flashlight through red-pink skin.” Additionally, I use metaphors in my last poem, describing the two people, “her fingers thin white keys” and “his voice modest honey.” I was inspired by some lines from Cane, such as “Rhobert wears a house, like a monstrous diver’s helmet, on his head,” where humans are described as inanimate objects, a flipping of the common literary device personification