Transforming the Fairy Tale

Anne Sexton's Transformations lured me into her poems not only because I'm a sucker for a morbid Grimm brothers fairytale, but also because of the quality and ability Sexton takes to slip between stories older than centuries and apply their truths to the unfoldings of a modern and personal world. The words aren't a mere retelling of distorted fairytales. They are a reclaiming. A reckoning. Images of food and disease mix on a page to reveal inner truths about the human condition beyond a witch and an oven or a frog and Princess's plate. Kisses aren't always a savior. The "happily ever afters" exist in consequence. A clear, uncomfortable, unflinching sarcasm colors the words. The appeal of the depraved, innocent, and insane drips from the page onto the fangs of a wolf full of stones to the bloody spindle prick of an insomniac too frightened by reality to sleep. Sexton reenvisions the fairytales as the Grimm's first imagined, and we are present in each and every story.