Transformations

Preface by Kurt Connegut, Jr. Beware! Keep out of reach of children! These poem-storis are a strange reenactment of seventeen Grimm fairy tales. What is most astonishing about these transformations is that they end up being as wholly personal as Anne Sexton's most intimate poems, coming curiously, for all their story-sound, from as deep a place. C.K. Williams writes: "Her metaphoric strength has never been greater - really funny, among other things, a dark, dark laughter" The tales sh has transormed include "Snow White", "Rumpelstiltskin", "Rapunzel", "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," The Frog Prince," and "Red Riding Hood" They create a wonderful little universe, and sho the poet in a new role, with a voice strangely prophetic. In his preface Kurt Vonnegut ways: "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.: Anne Sexton does a deeper favor for me: she domesticates my terror, examines it ad describes it, teaches it some tricks which willl amuse me, then lets it gallop into my forest once more. Drawings by Barbara Swan

Anne Sexton (1928-1974), the author of ten collections of poems, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1967.