Notes from Source: What, then, is Carson attempting? Ostensibly, a modern re-imagining of an ancient myth. More specifically, she is starting out with some fragments of a lost poem by an ancient Greek poet, Stesichoros (born around 650 BC), about a mythological creature named Geryon, “a strange winged red monster who lived on an island . . . quietly tending a herd of magical red cattle, until one day the hero Herakles came across the sea and killed him to get the cattle.” But although Carson’s book mimics the format of a scholarly translation, its relationship to the ancient myth is much more oblique. What we have here is a modern poem that seeks to emulate certain classical qualities such as directness, economy of expression and irony. Carson’s Geryon is a recognizably modern character: a lonely, small-town, gay American teenager. He does have red wings, but generally conceals them under a jacket. He meets up with a good-looking sort of Neal Cassady-ish drifter from New Mexico named Herakles. The young men hang out together and eventually have sex. Herakles drifts off. Geryon is also an amateur photographer and, for reasons unexplained, travels to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, he encounters a vaguely sinister visiting professor from California. Geryon also meets Herakles again, who has a new boyfriend of Incan ancestry called Ancash. Herakles and his two boyfriends, past and present, decide to visit Ancash’s home in Lima, and later, they and Ancash’s mother go to see a volcano.

Further Notes: Place: Los Angeles, Calif Publisher: Los Angeles Times Communications LLC