Anne Sexton: Twisted, brilliant poems

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton reconstructed foundational fairy tales to tell other stories altogether.

Deeper, darker stories. Strange, wondrous retelling of female archetypes in Grimms’ fairy tales. (Let’s not forget the original Grimm’s tales were far more sinister and malevolent than the sanitized versions read out loud to children. Rape, incest, cannibalism, torture and other heinous crimes while tripping through evil woods.)

“Transformations” binds her twisted, brilliant poems together with sex, death, violence, cruelty, suicide, disability, and madness.

It’s not the prince at all,
but my father
drunkeningly bends over my bed,
circling the abyss like a shark,
my father thick upon me
like some sleeping jellyfish