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The Monday Poem (old)
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Fairy-tale Logic by A.E. Stallings (11 August 2014)
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Sorry for being late - I forgot it was my turn! This is a poem & poet that I have just recently discovered. Here is a short biographical blurb...Alicia Stallings, who publishes as A. E. Stallings, was born in 1968. She grew up in Decatur, GA, and was educated at the University of Georgia and Oxford University in Classics. Her poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry (1994 & 2000) and has received numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize (Pushcart Prize Anthology XXII), and the Benjamin H. Danks award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her first collection, Archaic Smile (University of Evansville Press) received the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award, and her second collection, Hapax, (Northwestern University Press) received the 2008 Poets’ Prize. A third collection is forthcoming. Her verse translation of Lucretius, The Nature of Things, is out from Penguin Classics. She has lived in Athens, Greece since 1999.
Mod
Thanks Leslie - I like this! Especially the ending!
The ending is very interesting as Shirley already noted. It is there the reality comes alive - "The will to do whatever must be done:/Marry a monster. Hand over your first born son."
Mod
Me too!!!!
Didn't know the poet - and the poem. Nice idea n the whole
Another new poet for me too. Whimsical to start, with a very dark finish. Fairy tales usually have a 'happy ever after' ending, but this does not appear be what Stallings has in mind!
We always seem to expect fairytales to have a happy ending, although many seem positively gruesome! Or maybe they are more folk tales, really... I too appreciated the twist.I think this would be great read aloud to youngsters. Maybe some would even appreciate the many layers implied by the ending. Thanks Leslie.
Lovely poem, Leslie. It definitely fits with the style of most fairy tales
Mod
Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—
You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.
Originally published in Poetry(March 2010)