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Transformations

by Anne Sexton, Barbara Swan (Illustrator), Kurt Vonnegut (Foreword)

4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 · rating details · 2,408 ratings · 134 reviews

These poem-stories are a strange retelling of seventeen Grimms fairy tales, including "Snow White," "Rumpelstiltskin," "Rapunzel," "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," "The Frog Prince," and "Red Riding Hood." Astonishingly, they are as wholly personal as Anne Sexton's most intimate poems. "Her metaphoric strength has never been greater -- really funny, among other things, a d...more

Paperback, 128 pages

Published February 15th 2001 by Mariner Books (first published 1971)

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Apr 08, 2012 Kinga rated it 4 of 5 stars

Poetry is like wine to me. I enjoy it occasionally but I don’t have enough knowledge or experience to write elaborate tasting notes.

Like wine, I enjoy poetry on a more intangible level, the only difference is that of course, I am not more likely to go to bed with you if we end up reading poetry for the whole evening.
Therefore, I won’t write a proper review of Anne Sexton’s Transformations. But even Kurt Vonnegut Jr didn’t write anything sensible in his foreword to this edition.
‘Transformations’...more

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Nov 09, 2009 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Carol

Shelves: 2009, in-by-of-the-americas, poetry, reviewed

I am not sure which is better, the poems or the introduction by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Since his was only a few pages and hers were written in blood, I will side with sweet Anne of Mercy* but still, I was struck by Vonnegut's words before I ever got to hers.

I asked a poet friend one time what it was that poets did, and he thought awhile and then he told me, 'They extend the language.' I thought that was neat, but, it didn't make me grateful in my bones for poets. Language extenders I can take or le

...more I am not sure which is better, the poems or the introduction by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Since his was only a few pages and hers were written in blood, I will side with sweet Anne of Mercy* but still, I was struck by Vonnegut's words before I ever got to hers.

I asked a poet friend one time what it was that poets did, and he thought awhile and then he told me, 'They extend the language.' I thought that was neat, but, it didn't make me grateful in my bones for poets. Language extenders I can take or leave alone.

Anne Sexton does a deeper favor for me: she domesticates my terror, examines it and describes it, teaches it some tricks which will amuse me, then lets it gallop wild in my forest once more.

She does this for herself, too, I assume. Good for her.

I usually think of Vonnegut as part of that vicious crew from the later twentieth century. The ones who treat me pejoratively because I cannot relate to their works at all: John Updike, Norman Mailer, Martin Amis.... They are busy expanding literature and I am only a woman after all. Is it a complex on my part because I also read fantasies and fairy tales? No, it's because of they do not seem willing to give me a woman who I recognize. I will always turn to a fairy tale rather than put up with that.

Vonnegut has redeemed himself though. I will think of him differently, as he tells me a funny story of drawing the happiness chart of Cinderella for Anne Sexton when they met at a party, where most of us would have made small talk and wondered how many calories were in the artichoke dip and if there was anyone more interesting than this weird guy to talk to.

I may also have carried on this fondness for the introduction because it made sense. Anne Sexton is clearly brilliant and just as clearly a complete looney. The poems, all adaptations of Grimm's fairy tales, are amazing and dark, so dark. Like being caught in a nightmare and waking up to dangerous, snuffling sounds from under the bed. I am freaked out. I am alarmed. I am feeling some tiny fraction of the emotions Anne Sexton imagined when she was writing this work. It's hard to resist the pun; as if the Grimm's works weren't grim enough, Sexton draws in all the darkness of a modern sexualized society (a bit like Mailer, in a way, but I don't feel like going there). You should not be surprised that one of these was published in Playboy prior to incorporation in this collection. I can't imagine what it was like to have read these in 1971. They are not your triumphant-let's-take-back-women's-sexuality-yay-us poems of the women's liberation movement, for which we should be very thankful, as most of those were excruciatingly bad. These make Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (her collection of fairy tales) seem like tales appropriate for bedtime reading to small children.

Do not let this give you the impression that I didn't like them. Oh my god. I simply give you fair warning. They are not for the weak willed or the weak of mind (or stomach). (less)

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Dec 11, 2008 Natalie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-blame-the-patriarchy, poetry, female-pen

An essential part of my early-life feminist awakening. Observe Cinderella as viewed by Anne Sexton:

You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogeni...more An essential part of my early-life feminist awakening. Observe Cinderella as viewed by Anne Sexton:

You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.

Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.(less)

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Dec 23, 2008 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I love Anne's writing. These poems are quite "feminist". She doesn't fundamentally change the fairy tales we know (in some cases she avtually gets back to the real tale, for instance reclaiming the title of “Red Riding Hood”--she wasn’t originally “little” and she certainly isn’t in this poem--the tale was originally meant to be a lesson or moral lesson to young girls entering the lascivious and political court of Louis XIV), but there is a lot of good analysis going on here; much of it is fairl...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Sarah Coughlon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, 2012

The first time I encountered The Brothers Grimm, some very confused adult had given it to my eight-year-old self in a combined volume with Hans Christian Anderson's (far lighter) fairy tales... I mostly remember just being overwhelmed by the creepiness of the Grimm stories. Coming back to them for the first time in college, Anne Sexton's take on them is orders of magnitude more delightful and provocative than I suspect the actual German folk tales would be for me. Transformations certainly retai...more The first time I encountered The Brothers Grimm, some very confused adult had given it to my eight-year-old self in a combined volume with Hans Christian Anderson's (far lighter) fairy tales... I mostly remember just being overwhelmed by the creepiness of the Grimm stories. Coming back to them for the first time in college, Anne Sexton's take on them is orders of magnitude more delightful and provocative than I suspect the actual German folk tales would be for me. Transformations certainly retains all of the creepiness of those originals, but layered in ways that a child could never have understood. The dark humor is tinted with not just the macabre, but also the misogynistic... suddenly, the always-present sexual undertones of those stories are made explicit and urgent, and their gender politics become a central element of their creepiness and poignancy.

The form—a poetic introduction, followed by a retelling of the story—gives Sexton vast room for authorial creativity without taking massive amounts of license with the narrative itself, and the results are devastating. As it turns out, Sexton's (complicated) feminism in 1960s America works very well on the subtext of nineteenth-century folk tales. The prototype of the passive, virginal, fuckable young woman becomes central to her retellings, and by underlining the flatness and victimization of those characters she makes the Brothers Grimm orders of magnitude more disturbing.

Of course, all of this is done hilariously: the poems are pointedly and uproariously funny. Please read them in close proximity to friends, because some of those stanzas are of the kind that should not be left unshared: I found myself imagining them as though Anne Sexton herself were speaking to the reader, glass of vodka in hand, savoring the ability of these words to tickle and lacerate in the same breath.

Some collections of poetry are meant to be read slowly and carefully, studied over long periods of time... Transformations is not among them. I guess that a more temperate reader would recommend that you spread them out as punctuation for some other good thing, like a cappuccino and chocolate after a nice dinner. Their combustive hilarity and emotional depth makes each one of them a perfectly self-contained delight, but just short enough to leave you wanting more... if you have self-control, these would probably be really nice to build into your daily routine, like as something to read and think about over a nice tea before bed.

I was a glutton and devoured them in one sitting last night, no regrets.(less)

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Sep 25, 2012 Nicola rated it 3 of 5 stars

Creepy.

Though Sexton is a master of modernizing, personalizing, and deepening these already grim Grimm fairytales and of craft (like Plath her sing-song and rhymes are perfectly pitched to further disturb), I had an overall reaction of: why go here?

I like dark things, but there's a dark that's regenerative and there's a dark that's defeating. Why her dark falls into the latter category, I can't quite decide. Perhaps, it's from reading so much bad confessional poetry that even when faced with g...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Sabra Embury rated it 5 of 5 stars

The sharp-witted poems collected in this volume are reenactments of seventeen Grimm Fairy Tales, some more memorable from childhood (Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin) than others (the White Snake, Godfather Death). Some receive better tangents than others, too, and blessed be those, which are my favorites, especially "Red Riding Hood" and "the Twelve Dancing Princesses." Here's a taste:

If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Co

...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Lisa M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5252, poetry

I have always meant to read some of Anne Sexton's work. She falls into categories I can identify/be identified with: poet, tortured, suicidal, feminist. It was this motive and my love of fairy tales that read me to lead this book.

When revisiting the Grimm fairy tales, something new must be brought to them. They have been told and retold in various fashions, and it is difficult to bring anything new to them. In this work, Sexton took a route many other writers have-- she approached the already...more

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Feb 04, 2011 katemfs rated it 3 of 5 stars

So I'm not especially familiar with Brothers Grimm fairy tales, and that became glaringly obvious a few nights ago.

"Hey guys," I started, slightly inebriated. "I'm reading this book of poems--"

"Anne Sexton?" Moira asked, as the cover came within her view. "You're reading Anne Sexton?"

"Yes- so, these poems are, like, a retelling or reinterpretation or re- something of fairy tales."

At this point, Adam is making noises at his dog, and Moira is rolling her eyes about my latest literary endeavor. I,...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Ruby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, 2012

3.5
Some glorious lines, but on the whole not particularly memorable I think. Therefore three instead of four stars.

Good things:

"It is not enough to read Hesse
and drink clam chowder
we must have the answers."

"In an old time
there was a king as wise as a dictionary."

"But the princess smiled like warm milk
and merely dropped her ring into the sea."

"She offered him all the kingdom
but he wanted only this -
a living thing
to call his own.
And being mortal
who can blame him?"

"He laid his two sides down on th...more

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Aug 20, 2012 A.M. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-challenge-list, poetry

Having been an avid reader of fairy tales since I was a young girl, I looked forward to reading Anne Sexton's Transformations - a poetic interpretation of Grimms' finest, including Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty.

After reading the collection twice, however, I felt bittersweet and almost ambivalent about the poems. Yes - fairy tales in themselves are fantastical metaphors of our dark and violent subconscious Ego mind playing itself...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Ch_jank-caporale rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, traditional-lit

Transformations is a collection of poetic re-interpretations of the traditional fairy tales by Anne Sexton. They are probably not appropriate for children unless in high school. Caution should be made regarding some of the sexual content, not to mention the violence already included in many versions of the traditional tales.

Fairy tales are a method to transmit the values of a culture. In Transformations, Sexton questions some of the values they teach girls, and in doing so rebels against traditi...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Engl 328 rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Anne Sexton was born on November 9, 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts. During her early years she grew up in Massachusetts attending Rogers Hall Boarding School and later attended Garland School. She modeled for a while at Boston’s Hart Agency. On August 16, 1948 she married Alfred Sexton, and had two daughters.
Anne Sexton was an incredible poet. She suffered her whole life with a mental illness. Her first major breakdown was in 1954, which would lead her to meet Dr. Martin Orne, who would become a...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Nanalla rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, writers-i-love, fairy-tale, favorites, short-stories

Seventeen of the classic Grimm Fairy Tales: Modern-Intimate-Personal-Provoking-Dark-Twisted-Funny retelling.
Published in 1971 and it's still so modern today.

This collection of poems is for :

- those who love fairy tales.
- those who love stories in verse.
- those who love poetry (and whished bookstores had "larger" sections dedicated to it)
- the kind of Women Who Run with the Wolves.
- your kids. And their fathers too.

Some people are born with the gift of the Word.
Anne Sexton is One of them.

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May 20, 2009 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

For the teen, who is edgy and likes themes of disillusion and despair, Anne Sexton is by far my favorite recommendation. Transformations is Sexton’s reworking of seventeen Grimm fairy tales, including “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” and “Red Riding Hood.” Like Grimm’s original tales, Sexon’s poetry is equally black and macabre but also ironically humorous in its references to 20th century culture. For example, “Cinderella and the prince/lived, they say, happily ever after,/like two...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Andrea Beltran rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I read this collection in college and now realize I never fully appreciated it. I chose to revisit it with improved eyes (actually, I think the book called me to revisit it) and I dedicated myself to the dissection of each poem, line by line. I read it twice to be sure I didn't miss anything. Just as Vonnegut writes in his introduction, I could never attempt to explain these poems. I can hardly write a review of Anne Sexton's Transformations that I feel would do it any justice. It is a book to b...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

When I was small I spent many afternoons buried in my big book of Grimm's fairy tales. These poems recalled those days, except filtered through a lens of black-light posters on the walls and Jefferson Airplane spinning on the turntable. I imagined Anne Sexton situated in this tableau, reading these tales aloud, wreathed in smoke from the incense cone burning nearby. This copy also came from the library and smelled strongly of grandmother perfume, resulting in a bizarre juxtaposition of sensual s...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Karsten rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book is 16 of the Grimm brothers folktales, retold, and an intro poem declaring that we are all a boy who, "upon finding a nickel / he would look for a wallet. This boy! Upon finding a string / he would look for a harp." And, the poem goes on, he/we have found a gold key that will open this book, where Grimm's tales are transformed.

And upon finding the tales, we look for a...?

Sexton recognizes what is ridiculous in these old tales and drily teases it a little in every poem. The dwarves who...more The book is 16 of the Grimm brothers folktales, retold, and an intro poem declaring that we are all a boy who, "upon finding a nickel / he would look for a wallet. This boy! Upon finding a string / he would look for a harp." And, the poem goes on, he/we have found a gold key that will open this book, where Grimm's tales are transformed.

And upon finding the tales, we look for a...?

Sexton recognizes what is ridiculous in these old tales and drily teases it a little in every poem. The dwarves who find Snow White: "those little hot dogs." Red Riding Hood's basket of wine and cake for her ill grandmother: "Wine and cake? / Where's the aspirin? The penicillin? / Where's the fruit juice? / Peter Rabbit got camomile tea. / But wine and cake it was." The prince searching for Cinderella (who "walked around looking like Al Jolson"): "He began to feel like a shoe salesman."

All of this good-humored 20th-century detail is the magician's feint, though, so that we're smiling and looking away when the poems stab us in the heart and lance out a hot gush of corrupt wishfulness.

Cinderella and her prince live happily ever after "they say," like "two dolls in a museum case...their darling smiles pasted on for eternity...That story." They say? That story? We'll never believe again.

Red Riding Hood at the end munches cake, slurps wine, and "remember[s] nothing naked and brutal from that little death." Those being among the last words of the poem, though, we'll be remembering the naked brutality.

And Snow White? The one who was betrayed by a stepmother who "had a mirror to which she referred" while "pride pumped in her like poison"? The poem ends with Snow White's wedding, of course, where she is already "rolling her china blue eyes open and shut / and sometimes referring to her mirror / as women do."

And upon finding folk tales, we look for a...what?

A moral, maybe? A happy ending? A sense of justice? A big number in a major key? Nope. What we get here is one wry, magnificent wound after another.(less)

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Jan 02, 2012 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2-3book-challenge

Read the original here: http://marklindner.info/blog/2012/01/...

Brutal. Unflinching. Caustic. Anne Sexton let loose on fairy tales.

This is another book in my Two-Thirds Book Challenge.

There isn’t a lot to say here unless one is a fan of Sexton. We read a few of these along with many other Sexton poems (and those of Sylvia Plath) in the Madwomen Poets class I took in fall of 2010. I found an excellent copy of this in a lovely used bookstore (Defunct Books) in Iowa City sometime after the class wa...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Becky rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the first books I read in high school that rocked me to the core. Her feminist musings on the Grimm's Fairy Tales beg the questions "what if" and "maybe". Insane up-turning delivered with razor-sharp wit and hidden cynicism, this book was part of my feminist-in-training program, but can be enjoyed by all. She does a succinct job of re-telling the original tales that leaves the reader feeling enamored, romantic, saddened, and morose. Brilliantly written and will always and forever be one o...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Mikki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

Anne Sexton puts her spin on seventeen of the classic Grimm Fairy Tales -- simultaneously funny, twisted and dark. Each of her stories opens with a poem that introduces the tale with a comparison to modern culture.

For example, for Cinderella she writes:

You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That s...more

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Aug 20, 2012 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

The speaker in this case
is a middle-aged witch, me --
tangled on my two great arms,
my face in a book
and my mouth wide,
ready to tell you a story or two.

I expected to LOVE Transformations, an all caps, shouty kind of love, but instead I liked it, lowercase, normal conversational tones. I'm not sure why I didn't connect with Sexton's poems, especially since I love the way she plays with words and metaphor, mixes the dusty language of fairy tales with taxi girls and Thorazine.

Transformations is a co...more

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Nov 01, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

This is a good retelling, a great idea. I love the Grimm stories; I did some huge research paper on them in college and used this collection as a source, too. There are a lot of great references to women as the object.

Anyway, what I want to remember:

and only as she dreamt of the yellow hair
did moonlight sift into her mouth.

There once was a miller
with a daughter as lovely as a grape.

The apply was as smooth as oilskin
and when she took a bite
it was as sweet and crisp as the moon.
Their bodies met ov...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Jessica Bebenek rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: thesis, poetry

The poetry itself in this collection is quite lacking, I don't think there's really any argument there. While Sexton's style is definitely prosaic, in the majority of these poems her style doesn't add anything to the text which they are based on. The first few were quite bad, I thought, but then the poems which precede the retellings picked-up in quality.
Overall, the poems didn't really offer me any new insights into the stories which they were written in response too. I found her modern refere...more

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Jun 27, 2009 Meagan rated it 3 of 5 stars

While sexton doesn't really change much of the plot of the Grimm's fairy tales she does a wonderful job capturing the mindset of the modern reader. And this is how the poems read - a little intro to why the story is still relevent in today's time, a little bit of dark sarcasm here and there, with descriptions of these fairy tale charecters set to modern day references. She has a way with language.

It really was quite an enjoyable read and I was able to read it in an afternoon.

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Jan 20, 2012 Kristieanna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Anne Sexton makes me want to cut myself.
For some reason, I still read her, obsessively.
"My mouth blooms like a cut", she writes in "The Kiss".
What does this even mean?
Why does this phrase haunt me?

Knowing that she was a housewife tortured by words and imagery,
that she created instead of taking a nap,
that she could fry the eggs and then write
on her palms, of joy....
and that she died in a fur coat,
ringless and on purpose,
makes me tired which ultimately, saves me from cutting.

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Apr 17, 2012 Meredi rated it 2 of 5 stars

I have to discuss this book at our next poetry book club meeting otherwise I would not have finished reading it. The foreward by Vonnegut isn't bad. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why this is book has been reviewed so favourably. Sexton retells Grimm fairy tales in this way, 'and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened'. I’m sorry but this is tedious, lazy, and hardly even deserves to be called poetry.

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Sep 13, 2010 Victoria Wheeler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fairytale

This book was exactly what I expected, with Sexton's strong power of wording and grappling with fairytales of old. She does indeed "transform" the stories with her modern twists and nuances of language, often giving them meanings I had not yet considered. Overall an intricate but quick, pleasurable read.

Best line:
It is not enough to read Hesse
and drink clam chowder
we must have the answers.

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Jan 30, 2009 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

This is the only volume of Anne Sexton that I have read, but I did enjoy it. The volume is an updated, modernized, largely feminist re-telling of Grimms fairy tales. Since I am from a generation that knows most of these tales as the rather un-grim Disney version, it also provided me with a chance to sort out what the actual original tales contained that uncle Walt decided I didn't need to know. My but we (human beings) used to be much tougher on kids...but we were preparing them for a pretty tou...more

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Aug 29, 2010 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

The fairy tales are dark and real, Miss Sexton’s wit sharp, and the illustrations style of Barbara Swan is iconic of the time. Not only are these poems a great reason why these tales remain important but also why poets remain important. Poets are ‘Language extenders’ as well as translators of things or relevance and ambassadors of things unseen.

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About Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton once told a journalist that her fans thought she got better, but actually, she just became a poet. These words are characteristic of a talented poet that received therapy for years, but committed suicide in spite of this. The poetry fed her art, but it also imprisoned her in a way.

Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, sh...more Anne Sexton once told a journalist that her fans thought she got better, but actually, she just became a poet. These words are characteristic of a talented poet that received therapy for years, but committed suicide in spite of this. The poetry fed her art, but it also imprisoned her in a way.

Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, she went to a finishing school in Boston. Anne met her husband, Kayo (Alfred Muller Sexton II), in 1948 by correspondence. Her mother advised her to elope after she thought she might be pregnant. Anne and Kayo got married in 1948 in North Carolina where it was still possible to get married before the age of 18. After the honeymoon Kayo started working at his father-in-law’s wool business.

In 1953 Anne gave birth to her first-born, Linda Gray. Two years later Linda’s sister, Joyce Ladd, was born. But Anne couldn’t cope with the pressure of two small children over and above Kayo’s frequent absence (due to work). Shortly after Joy was born, Anne was admitted to Westwood Lodge where she was treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne (and six months later, her son, Dr. Martin Orne, took over). The original diagnosis was for post-natal depression, but the psychologists later decided that Anne suffered from depression of biological nature.

While she was receiving psychiatric treatment, Anne started writing poetry. It all started after another suicide attempt, when Orne came to her and told her that she still has a purpose in life. At that stage she was convinced that she could only become a prostitute. Orne showed her another talent that she had, and her first poetry appeared in print in January 1957. She wrote a huge amount of poetry that was published in a dozen poetry books. In 1967 she became the proud recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die (1966).

In March 1972 Anne and Kayo got divorced. After this a desperate kind of loneliness took over her life. Her addiction to pills and alcohol worsened. Without Kayo the house was very quiet, the children were at college and most of Anne’s friends were avoiding her because they could no longer sympathize with her growing problems. Her poetry started playing such a major role in her life that conflicts were written out, rather than being faced. Anne didn’t mention a word to Kayo about her intention to get divorced. He knew that she desperately needed him, but her poems, and her real feelings toward him, put it differently. Kayo talks about it in an interview as follows: “... I honestly don’t know, never have known, what her real, driving motive was in the divorce. Which is another reason why it absolutely drove me into the floor like a nail when she did it.”

On 4 October 1974 she put on her mother’s old fur coat before, glass of vodka in hand, she climbed into her car, turned the key and died of monodioxide inhalation. She once told Orne that “I feel like my mother whenever I put it [the fur coat] on”. Her oldest daughter, Linda, was appointed as literary executor and we have her to thank for the three poetry books that appeared posthumously.
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Quotes from Transformations

“I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!
Like a genie out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of the bedroom.” — 6 people liked it

“There once was a miller
with a daughter as lovely as a grape.
He told the king that she could
spin gold out of common straw.
The king summoned the girl
and locked her in a room full of straw
and told her to spin it into gold
or she would die like a criminal.
Poor grape with no one to pick.
Luscious and round and sleek.
Poor thing.
To die and never see Brooklyn.

(Rumpelstiltskin)” — 6 people liked it

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