Autobiography of a Wound

Poems

Brynne Rebele-Henry

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780822986188
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In ancient fertility carvings, artists would drill holes into the woman's body to signify penetrability, which is the basis of Autobiography of a Wound: allowing those wounds and puncture marks to speak through the fertility figures. The wounds are chronicled through letters and poems addressed to F (F stands for the fertility carvings themselves, which are being addressed as one unified deity), and A (Aphrodite, who is being referenced as a general deity of womanhood, a figurine that reappears throughout the poems, and a symbol that is referenced or portrayed in almost every fertility figurine or carving). Autobiography of a Wound reconstructs the narrative surrounding female pathos and the idea of the hysteric girl.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Scarab with device of kneeling fertility figure before obelisk
• Portrait of a female figure with puncture marks and frayed rope
• Self-portrait as a woman with a bullet wound
• Self-portrait as a girl made out of stone
• Self-portrait as a broken Venus statuette
• Definition of Girl
• Definition of a Fist
• Definition of Basalt
• Definition of Bleeding
• Definition of a Broken Wrist
• Aubade for a dying girl
• Aubade for a wound
• Aubade for a marble child
• Self-portrait with needles and a broken mouth
• Self-portrait as a wound
• Female fertility figure, bone, carved, B.C.
• Portrait as yourself
• Portrait as a menstruating figure
• Portrait as a dying man
• Portrait as a bleeding woman
• Self-portrait as the boys who died and the girls who were turned to bones
• Picture of F, myself and a lake town
• Picture of three girls, a white house and F
• Picture of the lost children and the first menstruation
• Self-portrait as the lake in which they were drowned
• Self-portrait as a girl without a body
• Self-portrait as a fertility figure
• Self-portrait as a drowning city
• Figure of Isis/Aphrodite
• Self-portrait as split-open lips, a gun and a cornfield at night
• Self-portrait as a wound, a bird skull and a stone
• The brief life of a marble woman
• The brief life of a wound
• The brief life of a girl
• The brief life of a stone figure
• The death of S, Aphrodite and the kneeling basilisk
• The carving of S/Aphrodite and F
• Marble female figure
• The pathos of fertility, 1921, Germany
• Standing female figure wearing a strap and a necklace
• Figure of fertility goddess (2700 B.C.)
• Figure of fertility goddess (2000 B.C.)
• Plaque with nude female in a shrine niche
• Terracotta statuette of a nude woman
• Head of a woman, 220 B.C.
• Kneeling female deity
• The history of bones
• The history of violence
• Self-biography as a hole
• Self-biography as a Venus
• Self-biography as a false saint
• Self-biography as a pregnant woman
• Self-biography as a girl with no mouth
• Autobiography of a Venus figure
• Autobiography of something fertile
• Autobiography of basalt and broken stones
• Autobiography of a wound
• Notes and Acknowledgments