Metzger has a doctorate in English Renaissance literature and teaches literature and drama at the University of New Mexico, where she is a lecturer in the University Honors Program. In this essay, Metzger discusses Alegría's appropriation of the classical elegiac form to memorialize her own life.

As she approaches the period that she calls "old age," Claribel Alegría responds by composing her own elegy, "Accounting," for which she uses a traditional poetic form to reflect upon the events of her life. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Alegría described this poem as having been created as a result of a period of reflection in which she asked herself, "what have been the crucial moments in my life?" In reflecting on her life, she chose "a few electrical instants" so that she could create a poem that would, as she related to...