A "novel in verse" retelling the myth of Geryon (the red-winged monster Heracles kills in the Tenth Labor) as a gay coming-of-age story in the 20th century, threaded with photography, travel, and the archaeology of heartbreak. Carson is a classicist who uses the ancient world to see the contemporary one more clearly. Autobiography of Red is her most formally innovative and emotionally devastating work. Her complete influence on 21st-century poetry is still being assessed.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.