Transformations

Poems

Anne Sexton, Barbara Swan

• Editore: Open Road Media
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781504034357
• Argomento: Literature
• Categoria: Women in Poetry

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton morphs classic fairy tales into dark critiques of the cultural myths underpinning modern society Anne Sexton breathes new life into sixteen age-old Brothers Grimm fairy tales, reimagining them as poems infused with contemporary references, feminist ideals, and morbid humor. Grounded by nods to the ordinary—a witch's blood "began to boil up/like Coca-Cola" and Snow White's bodice is "as tight as an Ace bandage"—Sexton brings the stories out of the realm of the fantastical and into the everyday world. Stripping away their magical sheen, she exposes the flawed notions of family, gender, and morality within the stories that continue to pervade our collective psyche. Sexton is especially critical of what follows these tales' happily-ever-after endings, noting that Cinderella never has to face the mundane struggles of marriage and growing old, such as "diapers and dust, " "telling the same story twice, " or "getting a middle-aged spread, " and that after being awakened Sleeping Beauty would likely be plagued by insomnia, taking "knock-out drops" behind the prince's back. Deconstructed into vivid, visceral, and often highly amusing poems, these fairy tales reflect themes that have long fascinated Sexton—the claustrophobic anxiety of domestic life, the limited role of women in society, and a psychological strife more dangerous than any wicked witch or poisoned apple.

IRON HANS

Take a lunatic

for instance,

with Saint Averton, the patron saint,

a lunatic wearing that strait jacket

like a sleeveless sweater,

singing to the wall like Muzak,

how he walks east to west,

west to east again

like a fish in an aquarium.

And if they stripped him bare

he would fasten his hands around your throat.

After that he would take your corpse

and deposit his sperm in three orifices.

You know, I know,

you’d run away.

I am mother of the insane.

Let me give you my children:

Take a girl sitting in a chair

like a china doll.

She doesn’t say a word.

She doesn’t even twitch.

She’s as still as furniture.

And you’ll move off.

Take a man who is crying

over and over,

his face like a sponge.

You’ll move off.

Take a woman talking,

purging herself with rhymes,

drumming words out like a typewriter,

planting words in you like grass seed.

You’ll move off.

Take a man full of suspicions

saying: Don’t touch this,

you’ll be electrocuted.

Wipe off this glass three times.

There is arsenic in it.

I hear messages from God

through the fillings in my teeth.

Take a boy on a bridge.

One hundred feet up. About to jump,

thinking: This is my last ball game.

This time it’s a home run.

Wanting the good crack of the bat.

Wanting to throw his body away

like a corn cob.

And you’ll move off.

Take an old lady in a cafeteria

staring at the meat loaf,

crying: Mama! Mama!

And you’ll move off.

Take a man in a cage

wetting his pants,

beating on that crib,

breaking his iron hands in two.

And you’ll move off.

Clifford, Vincent, Friedrich,

my scooter boys,

deep in books,

long before you were mad.

Zelda, Hannah, Renée.

Moon girls,

where did you go?

There once was a king

whose forest was bewitched.

All the huntsmen,

all the hounds,

disappeared in it like soap bubbles.

A brave huntsman and his dog

entered one day to test it.

The dog drank from a black brook;

as he lapped an arm reached out

and pulled him under.

The huntsman emptied the pool

pail by pail by pail

and at the bottom lay

a wild man,

his body rusty brown.

His hair covering his knees.

Perhaps he was no more dangerous

than a hummingbird;

perhaps he was Christ’s boy-child;

perhaps he was only bruised like an apple

but he appeared to them to be a lunatic.

The king placed him in a large iron cage

in the courtyard of his palace.

The court gathered around the wild man

and munched peanuts and sold balloons

and not until he cried out:

Agony! Agony!

did they move off.

The king’s son

was playing with his ball one day

and it rolled into the iron cage.

It appeared as suddenly as a gallstone.

The wild man did not complain.

He talked calmly to the boy

and convinced him to unlock the cage.

The wild man carried him and his ball

piggyback off into the woods

promising him good luck and gold for life.

The wild man set the boy at a golden spring

and asked him to guard it from a fox

or a feather that might pollute it.

The boy agreed and took up residence there.

The first night he dipped his finger in.

It turned to gold; as gold as a fountain pen,

but the wild man forgave him.

The second night he bent to take a drink

and his hair got wet, turning as gold

as Midas’ daughter.

As stiff as the Medusa hair of a Greek statue.

This time the wild man could not forgive him.

He sent the boy out into the world.

But if you have great need, he said,

you may come into the forest and call Iron Hans

and I will come to help you for you

were the only one who was kind

to this accursed bull of a wild ...