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A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects
A GUIDE TO FOLKTALES IN FRAGILE DIALECTS by award-winning author and poet Catherynne M. Valente is a delightful collection of poetry, short fables, and fairy tales that explore myth and wonder, ancient and modern, with an introduction by Midori Snyder.
"Structured around a series of folktale motifs, Valente's eloquent second full-length poetry collection dissects the perceived roles of women in Earth's and otherworldly fable and myth.... enlightening and enthralling."
-- Publishers Weekly
"Catherynne Valente writes in the language of dreams, which is not rational and yet always makes sense. I could read the poems in this book a hundred times and find new meanings, new pleasures in them. It is an astonishingly beautiful and deeply satisfying accomplishment ... A brilliant, beautiful book."
-- Theodora Goss
"A tale of two grandmothers, one mythical, one real, that will gently, inexorably break your heart. A story of a god's petty curse reimagined as a sensual, sexual postmodern nightmare. A sinister conspiracy of black magic and murder hatched in the land of Lewis Carroll. Those are just tiny morsels in the decadent poetic feast found in A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects -- Catherynne Valente doesn't so much retell legends and fairy tales as twist and sculpt them into new shapes, stunning objets d'art built from exhilarating language that never flinch from painful truths."
-- Mike Allen, three-time Rhysling Award winner
"Her poems enchant, enthrall and devastate, and this collection takes the astonishing skill she showed in Apocrypha and distills it, deepens it, sharpens it into a tool to carve stories out of language. If Sappho had written Ovid's Metamorphoses, she could not have done better than this."
-- SF Site
Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of the Orphan's Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and four books of poetry, Music of a Proto-Suicide, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna, and Oracles. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award and the Million Writers Award and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the World Fantasy Award, the Rhysling Award, and shortlisted for the Spectrum Award. She currently lives in Northeastern Ohio with her partner, two dogs, and two cats. Her sixth novel, Palimpsest, will be released by Bantam Spectra in February of 2009.
168 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2008
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991 people want to read
About the author
Catherynne M. Valente
261 books7,737 followersCatherynne M. Valente was born on Cinco de Mayo, 1979 in Seattle, WA, but grew up in in the wheatgrass paradise of Northern California. She graduated from high school at age 15, going on to UC San Diego and Edinburgh University, receiving her B.A. in Classics with an emphasis in Ancient Greek Linguistics. She then drifted away from her M.A. program and into a long residence in the concrete and camphor wilds of Japan.
She currently lives in Maine with her partner, two dogs, and three cats, having drifted back to America and the mythic frontier of the Midwest.
She currently lives in Maine with her partner, two dogs, and three cats, having drifted back to America and the mythic frontier of the Midwest.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 19, 2011
An instant comparison to Anne Sexton's Transformations comes to mind when reading this, but where Sexton had no problems going for the jugular, and even relished it, Valente seems too intoxicated by the beauty of language make anything but surface cuts.
"Gringa" and "Anatomy of a Yes" are the notable exceptions, and I wish she would have used the same incisiveness throughout the collection. Her use of language is, of course, exquisite; there are few fantasists writing today whose works have the same linguistic richness. But language alone is not enough. Resonance is also necessary.
Read it for the language, because it sure is pretty, but don't expect consistent depth. There is some repetitiveness, and in places, the prose fables are more startling than the poems. The collection is solid and thematically cohesive overall, but without challenging the reader to consider any fresh perspectives.
"Gringa" and "Anatomy of a Yes" are the notable exceptions, and I wish she would have used the same incisiveness throughout the collection. Her use of language is, of course, exquisite; there are few fantasists writing today whose works have the same linguistic richness. But language alone is not enough. Resonance is also necessary.
Read it for the language, because it sure is pretty, but don't expect consistent depth. There is some repetitiveness, and in places, the prose fables are more startling than the poems. The collection is solid and thematically cohesive overall, but without challenging the reader to consider any fresh perspectives.
December 6, 2008
Catherynne M. Valente, A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects (Norilana, 2008)
Few things are as worth waiting for as a new book by Catherynne Valente. As these things usually go, few things fill me with imaptientce at the waiting for them as a new book by Catherynne Valente. My current monetary situation (and the book's current, as I write this, availability situation where libraries are concerned—a most grievous oversight indeed) had me waiting far too long to pick up A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects, Valente's first book of poetry since 2005's Apocrypha. It was, however, entirely worth the wait.
I'm not sure I believed that Valente was capable of improving on the already-stellar work in Apocrypha, but there are pieces here that do so. While there's nothing in the book that falls short of the standard Valente set for herself in that last book, there are a handful of pieces that transcend even that:
“Hades is a place I know in Ohio,
at the bottom of a long, black stair
winding down I-76 from Pennsylvania,
winding down the weeds
through the September damp
and that old tangled root system
of asphalt and asphodel,
to the ash-fields,
clotted with fallen acorns
like rain puddled in fibrous pools.”
(“The Descent of the Corn-Queen of the Midwest”)
Anyone can make a person who's already seen something see it again in his mind. The point of poetry is to make someone who hasn't already seen it have a similar experience (similar because, as we all know, no two perceptions of a given even are identical, depending on the baggage, the mood, perhaps even the amount of caffeine extant in the system each reader brings to the table). That's how it's supposed to work in a really good book of poetry.
The title of the book implies retellings of old folktales, perhaps, in the vein one would find in the work of Angela Carter, Wendy Walker, or a number of other (and somewhat less accomplished than those twin doyennes of the modern form) retellers who have emerged in the past few years. And to be sure, there are fragments of tales here that you might recognize. But Valente knows, somewhere deep in her bones, that all tales are in some way folk tales; it's just that for most tales, the folk haven't appeared yet. And thus it is that personal history can be woven into folk tales (and if it's not personal history in some of these pieces, then I'm even more impressed):
“When they came to visit us last Christmas,
he grumbled about the capitalist dogma
of our spangled ornaments,
our 9 pound turkey glistening like a gold-skinned baby,
our soft mezzo-soprano two-part harmony.
He spat after her when she went to Mass.
I stayed behind
to wash the big turkey plate,
and he leaned against the black kitchen counter,
leering at me like an overseer.
He put his hands over mine in the soapy water,
and they were cold as storms.
He whispered in my ear,
his breath full of low clouds.
(“Gringa”)
It's not just the confessional poetry that's been in vogue since the fifties, it's something more, something with that slight tang of legend. It says “This is a tale to tell around a campfire after all the children have gone to bed, scared of men with hooks for hands and creeping vines.” At this point, I had also planned to quote from the quietly devastating “The Eight Legs of Grandmother Spider”, the book's most personal piece, but there's no way to give you the full effect of the piece without giving you the whole thing, which is too long for a review. The same could be said, of course, with the two poems referenced above, but I could use pieces to point things out. You won't get the full effect of those until you read them for yourself, and that is something you should do as soon as possible. Valente is a true talent, right up there with America's best working authors—Walker, Koja, Taaffe, a handful of others—and the sooner your discover her gifts, the less you'll have to go back and experience when you inevitably decide to gobble up everything she's already written. *****
Few things are as worth waiting for as a new book by Catherynne Valente. As these things usually go, few things fill me with imaptientce at the waiting for them as a new book by Catherynne Valente. My current monetary situation (and the book's current, as I write this, availability situation where libraries are concerned—a most grievous oversight indeed) had me waiting far too long to pick up A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects, Valente's first book of poetry since 2005's Apocrypha. It was, however, entirely worth the wait.
I'm not sure I believed that Valente was capable of improving on the already-stellar work in Apocrypha, but there are pieces here that do so. While there's nothing in the book that falls short of the standard Valente set for herself in that last book, there are a handful of pieces that transcend even that:
“Hades is a place I know in Ohio,
at the bottom of a long, black stair
winding down I-76 from Pennsylvania,
winding down the weeds
through the September damp
and that old tangled root system
of asphalt and asphodel,
to the ash-fields,
clotted with fallen acorns
like rain puddled in fibrous pools.”
(“The Descent of the Corn-Queen of the Midwest”)
Anyone can make a person who's already seen something see it again in his mind. The point of poetry is to make someone who hasn't already seen it have a similar experience (similar because, as we all know, no two perceptions of a given even are identical, depending on the baggage, the mood, perhaps even the amount of caffeine extant in the system each reader brings to the table). That's how it's supposed to work in a really good book of poetry.
The title of the book implies retellings of old folktales, perhaps, in the vein one would find in the work of Angela Carter, Wendy Walker, or a number of other (and somewhat less accomplished than those twin doyennes of the modern form) retellers who have emerged in the past few years. And to be sure, there are fragments of tales here that you might recognize. But Valente knows, somewhere deep in her bones, that all tales are in some way folk tales; it's just that for most tales, the folk haven't appeared yet. And thus it is that personal history can be woven into folk tales (and if it's not personal history in some of these pieces, then I'm even more impressed):
“When they came to visit us last Christmas,
he grumbled about the capitalist dogma
of our spangled ornaments,
our 9 pound turkey glistening like a gold-skinned baby,
our soft mezzo-soprano two-part harmony.
He spat after her when she went to Mass.
I stayed behind
to wash the big turkey plate,
and he leaned against the black kitchen counter,
leering at me like an overseer.
He put his hands over mine in the soapy water,
and they were cold as storms.
He whispered in my ear,
his breath full of low clouds.
(“Gringa”)
It's not just the confessional poetry that's been in vogue since the fifties, it's something more, something with that slight tang of legend. It says “This is a tale to tell around a campfire after all the children have gone to bed, scared of men with hooks for hands and creeping vines.” At this point, I had also planned to quote from the quietly devastating “The Eight Legs of Grandmother Spider”, the book's most personal piece, but there's no way to give you the full effect of the piece without giving you the whole thing, which is too long for a review. The same could be said, of course, with the two poems referenced above, but I could use pieces to point things out. You won't get the full effect of those until you read them for yourself, and that is something you should do as soon as possible. Valente is a true talent, right up there with America's best working authors—Walker, Koja, Taaffe, a handful of others—and the sooner your discover her gifts, the less you'll have to go back and experience when you inevitably decide to gobble up everything she's already written. *****
January 16, 2013
While I love Valente's language (which is beautiful and awe-inspiring), I often felt like I was running just to keep up with her references to more obscure stories classic mythology. The poems where I understood her references or which didn't reference specific stories at all were my favorites, but often I felt like I was very close but couldn't quite get what she was trying to achieve because I didn't know the background she was referencing.
My only complaint, which was fairly minor but did make the book more challenging to get through the longer I read, was that so many of her poems shared the common theme of women being smothered, emotionally castrated, and otherwise imprisoned by their husbands or other males. I understand carrying a common theme throughout a collection of poetry, but because this was one was so obvious and used in almost every poem, it gave the impression that the book was a single long, epic poem split into chapters. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I wasn't prepared to read a long, epic poem and so found it mentally exhausting. I had to take a lot of breaks while reading the book, almost as if to catch my breath.
My only complaint, which was fairly minor but did make the book more challenging to get through the longer I read, was that so many of her poems shared the common theme of women being smothered, emotionally castrated, and otherwise imprisoned by their husbands or other males. I understand carrying a common theme throughout a collection of poetry, but because this was one was so obvious and used in almost every poem, it gave the impression that the book was a single long, epic poem split into chapters. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I wasn't prepared to read a long, epic poem and so found it mentally exhausting. I had to take a lot of breaks while reading the book, almost as if to catch my breath.
March 15, 2012
The first fiction I've read for a while, I think. I'm very much in the mood for Catherynne M. Valente's rich, poetic language, and this ebook was just the perfect type. It's full of poetry and very short stories, fragments and retellings of myths and fairytales. The prose is poetic and the poetry tells stories, as you might expect from Valente. There's some absolutely gorgeous imagery, though in a way it is very, very typical of her style, and unsurprising, in that sense.
Probably not the best introduction to her work, but if you know you already like her stuff, it's available for $3 from her site and is worth picking up.
Probably not the best introduction to her work, but if you know you already like her stuff, it's available for $3 from her site and is worth picking up.
August 9, 2016
I'm not a big poetry fan, but I love Valente, so I gave it a try. I liked it more than I expected and I'm assuming those who like both Valente and poetry will love it.
November 21, 2021
3.5 stars
November 28, 2008
I bought this ebook on a whim from Valente's website. I mention this because I don't necessarily read books of poetry straight through---unless they are written as a cycle of narrative poems---but rather flip through them, alighting upon those which catch my eye. I'm kind of glad I did read this one straight through, partly because it made me notice poems that I might not otherwise have, and partly because, whether intended as such or not, the prose sections, written like descriptions from an academic work on folklore, did seem to have a particular narrative flow.
Catherynne Valente is a rising star in the genres of mythic poetry and fiction; her writing reminds me at times of Angela Carter and Tanith Lee, the fictional academia of Jane Yolen in her Sister Light, Sister Dark series and in Cards of Grief, and the fairy tale poetry of Anne Sexton and Olga Broumas. Trained as a classicist (yay!), Valente shows a wide familiarity with folklore of diverse regions and, in . . .Fragile Dialects, even brings that mythic awareness to the New Testament ("An Issue of Blood") and the agrarian regions of the US ("The Descent of the Corn-Queen of the Midwest"). She has a strong feminist sensibility, which shines through, for example, in what is today my favorite poem of the collection "Suttee," which imagines Persephone and Sita from the Ramayana as sisters; the former is doomed to spend half her life in the Underworld, while the latter has escaped her demonic captor through a trial by fire. By now, it may not be a new thing to give voice to our lost heroines, but Valente does an impressive job, writing with conviction and with elegance and not shying away from either sensuality and violence. What's more, as was evident in her award-winning The Orphan's Tales duology, she is equally able to create new folklore, which is convincingly familiar and yet surprisingly new.
Catherynne Valente is a rising star in the genres of mythic poetry and fiction; her writing reminds me at times of Angela Carter and Tanith Lee, the fictional academia of Jane Yolen in her Sister Light, Sister Dark series and in Cards of Grief, and the fairy tale poetry of Anne Sexton and Olga Broumas. Trained as a classicist (yay!), Valente shows a wide familiarity with folklore of diverse regions and, in . . .Fragile Dialects, even brings that mythic awareness to the New Testament ("An Issue of Blood") and the agrarian regions of the US ("The Descent of the Corn-Queen of the Midwest"). She has a strong feminist sensibility, which shines through, for example, in what is today my favorite poem of the collection "Suttee," which imagines Persephone and Sita from the Ramayana as sisters; the former is doomed to spend half her life in the Underworld, while the latter has escaped her demonic captor through a trial by fire. By now, it may not be a new thing to give voice to our lost heroines, but Valente does an impressive job, writing with conviction and with elegance and not shying away from either sensuality and violence. What's more, as was evident in her award-winning The Orphan's Tales duology, she is equally able to create new folklore, which is convincingly familiar and yet surprisingly new.
June 30, 2010
Just took this out of the library along with other books of hers. It looks fascinating.
In the middle of this now. I like her fiction better but this is excellent.
Excellent book. WHen I read the poems that are NOT specifically mythic, I expected to be disappointed, but they're also excellent. It comes as no suprise that this she is an excellent poet, becuase, as I learned from both "Orphan's Tales" books, Catherynne M Valente has full acess to her own personal muse. And a strange and dark use it is. She is truly the High Priestess of Story.
In the middle of this now. I like her fiction better but this is excellent.
Excellent book. WHen I read the poems that are NOT specifically mythic, I expected to be disappointed, but they're also excellent. It comes as no suprise that this she is an excellent poet, becuase, as I learned from both "Orphan's Tales" books, Catherynne M Valente has full acess to her own personal muse. And a strange and dark use it is. She is truly the High Priestess of Story.
October 12, 2019
Have you ever read a folktale, only to feel a bit disappointed at the end, as though it didn’t really tell the story in the full, complex beauty of its complexity? This book tells all of those tales from the perspective of the women involved – even those tales you didn’t think had female characters. Some of the poems are stories I recognized; others were unfamiliar to me. Having read them, I won’t ever hear the original stories the same way again. There is much grief and pain in this book, but there is salve in reading it and finally having this side of the story out in the open.
September 8, 2012
Lovely and rich. I had never read any of Valente's poetry collections before, but I'm not surprised to discover how much I enjoyed this collection. The retellings are original, quirky at times, and resonate with emotion and meaning. Some of the retellings I recognized, a lot I didn't, but I still enjoyed all of the pieces. I feel like this is a collection I will reread as I learn and read more folk and fairy tales. I will also pick up more of Valente's poetry collections.
October 10, 2008
The poetry was difficult to understand and I know I'm missing a lot, but I enjoyed what I read. Some of the parts were very harsh and violent, but a lot of the way mythology was used seemed creative.
September 24, 2011
Wonderfully crafted and makes you feel as if you've transcended space and landed in the hollows of the past. It's filled with fragile words, timeless stories, and strong heroines. It leaves you with a sense of affinity for those in the tales.
Want to read
July 22, 2016When Hazel (The Fault in Our Stars) says that she would read her favorite author's grocery lists, I totally get that. I feel that way about everything Catherynne Valente writes.
October 17, 2010
I got about 30 pages in before stopping this. I didn't really like any of the poems. Decided just to read the small stories inbetween them instea.d
June 2, 2015
As usual---beautiful words everywhere from CMV.
June 28, 2012
I wouldn't expect anything less than awesome by CMV now.
June 3, 2012
Beautiful and sensual in the usual CMV fashion, if a bit heady due to the form.
July 29, 2012
Blow my mind good. And thats just the author, add in her poetic re tellings of fairytales and you have an incredably powerful combination.
Read
October 9, 2012I'm unsure of how to rate this. I think I'll come back to it.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews