Response to a poem

I chose this poem for two reasons; first because as a young girl I always dreamed about fairy-tales and hoped they really could come true, and second because as a mother I often read fairy-tales to my children.

The poem by A.E. Stallings takes the idea of stories we all have learned and loved as children and disassembles all of their appeal. A seemingly harmless child’s story all-of-a-sudden becomes frightening and unattainable. She seems to sabotage the idea of a fairy-tale right from the start when she points out all of the “impossible tasks” that they hold. I can’t help but wonder what made her feelings toward fairly-tales so jaded. Yes they are full of fantasy and adventure but these are the ideas that help children engage their imagination and creativity. When she says “Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat, Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat”.( 2-3 )she is exaggerating the obstacles that most be overcome. Is she referencing obstacles in life? Is she saying that we shouldn’t dream of sustaining things in life that seem to be impossible? Is she suggesting that because things are difficult we should just give up?

She uses rhyming, which helps the flow of the poem but almost poses a type of irony. As she attacks the even idea of playful fairy-tales she is engaging in jaunty trickery. As she enters into the second verse she pulls your imagination back into play when she says “You have to fight magic with magic” ( 9 ). You begin to feel that perhaps her coarse negativity towards the idea of a fairy-tale is taking a turn towards playfulness, and then she sends your bliss into a spiraling decline when she says “Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.” (14).

I can’t help but think that she has misinterpreted the point to all fairy-tales; the point is that regardless of the obstacles we are presented with in out lives we must fight the battles a keep looking until we find our happily-ever-after. When she says “Marry a monster” (14) is she saying that a happy, fairy-tale marriage is only an object of ones imagination? When she says “Always it’s impossible what someone asks” ( 8 )is she saying that people always set their expectations to high? Fairy-tales are created to engage your mind in playful dreams, to create desires and pull forth your imagination; Stallings rips the dreams from our fingertips an forces them into a pool of dread.


Help to encourage a life time love for reading! Whether it is a fairy-tale or an auto biography, make it fun!

http://www.readingfoundation.org/

  A. E. (Alicia) Stallings. Fairy-tale Logic. 2010. web http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/238826


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