"Transformations" by Anne Sexton (published 1971)



Brilliant, beautiful, sad. With slight sardonic quips and a strong sense for dysfunction, my only complaint is the shrinking of wonder by Sexton’s unveiling of a darker, more painful sense of the martyr’s plight. That may be what Sexton got wrong: that the main character of the fairy-tale is saintly. No, only unknowing, lacking scheme, lacking artifice. Still, the seventeen poems based off of fairy-tales in “Transformations” are brilliant, beautiful, and sad all the same. For all souls who may feel a bit jaded with the world, this one’s for you.

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