Disclaimer:  ARC via Open Road Media and Netgalley

                I was first introduced to Anne Sexton in college during an American Poetry class.  Actually, I was introduced to Sexton’s poetry because by that time she was long dead.   Shortly afterwards, I read her Transformations which will always be one of my favorite books.  In her poetic retellings of various Brother Grimm stories, from the most famous to less well known, Sexton shows how fairy tales are still current and powerful, and still can be connected to the modern day.  Therefore, when Open Road Media put this up on Netgalley, I immediately downloaded it.

                If you are someone who has been following my reviews for a while what I am about to say is old hat.  If not, then you should know that I am Auto-Approved for Open Road Media titles on Netgalley.  For me, Open Road Media is one of those publishing companies that synonymous with excellence.  I love their reprinting of various lesser known feminist books as well as various studies of current issues (such as abortion).  The Complete Poems of Sexton continues in this tradition.  Care was taken in producing the digital version.  As most readers of digital media can tell you, poetry is not always formatted well for e-readers.  This is not the case here.  Open Road Media took care to preserve each poems structure and look.  The only criticism I have on this front is the lack of illustrations for Transformations.

                Sexton’s poetry is dark and hits the reader hard.  There is something unflinching or uncompromising in her writing.  In this collection, one can not only see that but also how fairy tale and myth inspired/influenced her writing even before Transformations.  Take, for instance, “Where I Live in This Honorable House of the Laurel Tree”, a poem written from the viewpoint of Daphne after her transformation into the tree when trying to escape from Apollo.  In Sexton’s poem, the lines are more blurry, the anger subdued, and the tragedy up front and center.  Or “The Farmer’s Wife” a poem that showcases a marriage that isn’t as blooming as would first appears.  Here, she is tapping into the ideas and themes in the Feminine Mystique or for the more modern reader as expressed in the music of Paula Cole.

                The witches are here as well, both as giver and taker.  They are tied with Sexton’s view of life and birth.  In fact, many of the poems mediate about birth and the connection to finding oneself.   This is most powerfully expressed in the poem “The Abortion” as well as the poem “Water”.  In fact, it is impossible to read either one of those poems without thinking about current issues before the US Supreme Court.

                Considering Sexton’s struggle with mental illness, it is no surprise that many poems, even those about birth, also connect to death or even a struggle against an unimaginable though not evil darkness.  There is “Sylvia’s Death”, about Plath, which eventually gives way to poems that meditate on religion.  And in many ways these poems (“Protestant Easter” being one) that are the most powerful because they are about that quest of understanding and a desire to come to terms with something that in many ways defies description.  The poems are not just about doubt, but even a desire, a need, to believe. 

                Sexton’s poetry has long had the reputation being dark, but that is a simplistic description.  Her poetry is human.  This collection showcases that.

Damn it, Anne Sexton, now look what you made me do. I should be resting, but I poemed all over myself instead. All your fault. (Thank you.)

I love this woman. Spending the afternoon with her. If I must choose between The Moiraie of American 20th century literature--Dorothy, Sylvia, and Anne--I cast my thread of fate with Anne, every time, though I love and need them all.

In the throes of my renewed passion for all things fairy tale this summer, I decided to pick up my favorite book of poetry, Anne Sexton's (or Mother Sexton, to evoke the persona she takes on here) collection of Grimm stories, told with her usual biting wit, and cynical eye for female behavior and gender roles. While "Cinderella" is perhaps the poem that gets reproduced the most in collections:

Next came the ball, as you all know.

It was a marriage market.

Mainly, I think, because of its common themes, the (sharply humorous) disdain Sexton regularly show for domesticity, for vapid innocence. But, thought he book starts and ends with two famous tales, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:

The hunter, however, let his prisoner go

and brought a boar's heart back to the castle.

The queen chewed it up like cube steak.

Now I'm the fairest, she said,

lapping at her slim white fingers.

And Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty):

The king ordered every spinning wheel

exterminated and exorcised.

Briar Rose grew to be a goddess

and each night the king

bit the hem of her gown to keep her safe.

He fastened the moon up,with a safety pin

to give her perpetual light.He forced every male in the court

to scour his tongue with Bab-o

lest they poison the air she dwelt in.

Thus she dwelt in his odor.

Rank as honeysuckle.

But, for me, it's the lesser tales, like Little Red Riding Hood:

It was a carnal knife that let

Red Riding Hood out like a poppy,

quite alive from the kingdom of the belly.

And grandmother too

still waiting for cakes and wine.

The wolf, they decided, was too mean

to simply be shot so they filled his belly

with large stones and sewed him up.

He was heavy s a cemetery

and when he woke up and tried to run off

he fell over dead. Killed by his own weight.

Many a deception ends on such a note.

Or even the obscure to little known ones, such as The Maiden Without Hands:

She stretched her neck like an elastic,

up, up, to take a bite of a pear

hanging from the king's tree.

Picture her there for a moment,

a perfect still life.

After all,

she could not feed herself

or pull her pants down

or brush her teeth.

She was, I'd say,

without resources.

Each begins with Mother Sexton, ever the storyteller, wriggling to the heart of the tale, or her interpretation, and, like any good book of fairy tales, while you can find many of these poems in collections, this is best taken, devoured and digested, as a whole. (Especially with Barbara Swan's outstanding illustrations.)

In the forward, Kurt Vonnegut notes that, while a good poet extends the language, Anne Sexton domesticates his terror, "examines it and describes it, teaches it some tricks which will amuse me, then lets it gallop wild in my forest once more." I couldn't have said it better.

Take my looking glass and my wounds and undo them.

--"Now"