Anne Sexton's "Transformations"

I felt a bit betrayed by this book. When I thought Sexton would be literally reinventing the fairytales, she was just retelling most of them in a poetic format. Quite a few times, she'll add in a few biting quipps that emphasize her sarcastic voice, humor, and wit that she's so well-known for. I read this book side-by-side the fairytales told by the Grimm brothers. It almost seemed as if Sexton read the fairytale and wrote the poem in the duration of one cup of coffee. Don't get me wrong! I like Sexton a lot. Here is one of my favorite love poems by her, actually, that a loved one recently brought to my attention:

Us

I was wrapped in black
fur and white fur and
you undid me and then
you placed me in gold light
and then you crowned me,
while snow fell outside
the door in diagonal darts.
While a ten-inch snow
came down like stars
in small calcium fragments,
we were in our own bodies
(that room that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed
your feet dry with a towel
because I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!

Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o'clock night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre after acre of gold,
and we harvested,
we harvested.

*

But I do enjoy several aspects about this book. Like I already mentioned, I like the humor she instills within these poems. There is often a sense of urgency and impatience in these poems. And since these poems are supposed to be fairytales, it makes me wonder about this urgency. I wonder...is she impatient to tell the story or to write the poem? Or both? Sometimes she seems annoyed by the protagonists she must write about in this book. Especially the women, who in fairytales are always damsels in distress. I can only imagine that this is a huge turn-off for Sexton. So with her big, bold voice, she'll be critical or mocking of these princesses and damsels (daughters!) in distress. Here is an example of Sexton's impatience within the poem "Rumpelstiltskin".

The king married her
and within a year
a son was born.
He was like most new babies,
as ugly as an artichoke
but the queen thought him a pearl.
She gave him her dumb lactation,
delicate, trembling, hidden,
warm, etc.
*

Not only does the syntax of the poem make the poem seem rushed, but so does the sarcasm and the use of the "etc" at the end. The syntactical rush comes from the use of all the commas to create a laundry-list of domesticity that Sexton does not seem to want to humor. She claims that babies are typically ugly and creates potential commentary by stating that of course the queen thought the ugly baby to be a pearl. It's very interesting and I think her technique is very...her.

There are several examples of Sexton mocking the happy-go-lucky endings of these fairytales. For instance, in the poem "The White Snake", when the man wins the princess' love and charm, and are bound to live happily ever after, Sexton writes, "They played house, little charmers,/exceptionally well." And she ends the poem with an image of this happy couple boxed away like some sweet Christmas package as if stilling them within time. But Sexton makes it a bit more dismal because she can and writes, "...living happily ever after--/a kind of coffin,/a kind of blue funk./Is it not?"Sexton ends her poems not with periods, but with a smash of her cigarette butt.

And Sexton was also very impatient with the princess in "Rumpelstiltskin" who could not for the life of her spin straw into gold. Sexton writes, "Poor grape with no one to pick./Luscious and round and sleek./Poor thing./To die and never see Brooklyn." It's hilarious, right? The little tart princess is belittled by Sexton. She despises how the princess cries. She writes, "She wept,/of course, huge aquamarine tears." Sexton mixes beautiful images with sarcastic humor in order to belittle the princess. The "of course" is her left hook and the "aquamarine" is Sexton playing along with the overly-exaggerated language often used in fairytales.

Another interesting aspect of all these poems is that they are told much like fairytales. In the beginning of each poem is Sexton's complete and utter voice. The story is not yet begun, but she's giving a little prologue concerning what is bound to happen in the fairytale that will ensue. Some are a bit confusing and some are very dismal. The most dismal is in the final poem of the book, "Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)". I will quote just a small portion of this prologue that in my opinion emphasises the darkness that Sexton wants to portray in this specific fairytale:

Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.
Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as honeysuckle.

*

Dark, isn't it? Of course, of all the poems in _Transformations_, this specific poem least follows the actual fairytale of Sleeping Beauty. These prologues to all of these poems are what interest me the most considering the rest of the poems are just the fairytales retold with a few "asides" from the poet herself. But that's just my opinion.

I would like to read more of Anne Sexton, of course. I heard that her book of love poems were especially good, so I'll have to check them out.