One of the most interesting things about Olga Broumas's book Beginning with O was her use of line breaks. In all of these poems she uses every line break to her advantage wasting none of them, like in "Beauty and the Beast"

For years I fantasized pain
driving, driving,
me over each threshold
I thought I had, till finally (55)

By breaking on these end words she is able to make each line it own statement which almost functions separately from the poem, yet at the same time adds depth to the poem's ultimate meaning. These line breaks make her poems slippery at times. When I was reading a poem I thought I knew where the poem was going and where Broumas was taking me as a reader. I thought I knew until I read the next line. It kept me on my toes, and kept me guessing until the very end of the poem. This was one of the things that I enjoyed the most about all of her poems.

It was also interresting to compare Broumas's fairytale poems to Sexton's fairy tale poems. When I began to read these poems I could see the influences that Sexton had on Broumas. I also liked to see Broumas's take on these particular fairy tales which where at times fairly close to Sexton, and at times no where near Sexton.

The thing which really set Broumas's fairy tale poems apart from Sexton's was the way Broumas jumps right into her transformation of the the tale and really transforms the fairy tale. Like in "Beauty and the Beast" where Broumas does not even seem to pay the original tale any mind. Instead she simply uses it as a framing story for the story she wants to tell.

I remember reading in one of the essay's at the begining of this class something along the lines that re visioning these fairy tales and myths is a kind of mask, so I have to wonder sometimes whether or not Broumas used these poems to hide something she did not want the reader to see. While with Sexton's poems I had to ask what exactly was being re visioned, with Broumas I have to ask why are these being re visioned. Why is Broumas using this mask in her poetry? It could be because it meshes well with her subject matter. It could be to protect her self, after all if you're not careful a poem can steal something from you.

Ochester

This is my first time reading Ed Ochester, and I must say that I enjoyed it. The thing which caught my attention was the conversational tone of his work. He seems to invite the reader in to the poem. Along with the conversational tone of these poems, I also enjoyed the narrative aspect of his work. Every poem was like a story that I was being told, not one I was reading. The poem Leechburgh, PA I think illustrates this unique blend of Ochester's conversational tone and narrative style.

One could almost be happy here.
the corner drugstore, Steinburg's,
like the fifties in Brooklyn
with a window full of surgical
appliances and pantyhose,
and in front on Friday night
a group of hoods
talking about getting laid maybe
but obviously not doing it,
their big dumb dicks
wrapped away like tubular chimes
on the symphony off-night,
like exclamation points
looking for something to happen
on Friday night, at Steinburg's
in Leechburgh, Pennsylvania. (61)

This poem also illustrates the kind of humor Ochester utilizes in his poetry. It is a far cry of Sexton's dark, wry humor that made you want to laugh and cringe at the same time. It is more of the kind of humor that simply makes you want to laugh, like in the poem Monroeville, PA when someone on the street yells hey asshole and everyone turns around.

I also liked that for the majority of the poems I did not have to put a lot of thought into the poem. This is not to say I thought the poems were easy or basic, but that I did not need to spend a lot of time trying to get into the poem. Instead it felt like my grandfather was telling me a story. I really admire poetry that is accessible and easy to get into. After reading myth poems for a couple of weeks now, this is a nice change of pace.

The topics of Ochester's poems also struck me. It was amazing to see the wide range of topics he writes on, everything from social commentary, to his personal life. I loved how in his poems about society and culture, he was able to get his point across with subtlety. It feels like whenever I read a social commentary poem it bashes me over the head with things like pop culture, or how fat Americans are, or one of the many other obvious problems everyone talks about. In Ochester's work however he is able to get that point across with enough subtlety so it did not feel like he was preaching to me about the trappings of our modern society.

After reading Ochester's work, I am excited to hear him read, and even more excited at the opportunity to pick his brain on Tuesday.

Transformations

The first thing which struck me about the poems in Transformations was the subtle humor Sexton used in her poetry. Granted this humor was very wry and sometimes dark, and always with a sarcastic tone. Like in "Cinderella" when Sexton writes

"The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring fourth.
That is the way with amputations.
They don't just heal up like a wish." (56)

I think these lines are a good illustration of the humor found throughout the book. It is a humor which is not overtly funny, and in fact at times is quite disturbing. I was curious as to why exactly I found some of the things in Sexton's poems humorous, so I went on Wikipedia to look up humor. I found an interesting quote there as to the orgin of humor.

"The theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds anything funny. Effectively, it explains that humor occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response."

Granted this comes from Wikipedia, so the actual scientific validity of this statement may vary. However, regardless of its scientific validity, I think that quote has interesting ramifications for Sexton's poetry. Namely, what are the surprising patterns she creates to evoke a humorous response from the reader? For me these patterns arose when she transformed the fairy tales to make them her own and to expose some part of the tale to give the reader a new and fresh look at an old story.

Sexton's humor is one of the things which really allows her to transform the poems and shed a new unique light on them. The other way in which she does this is through the opening parts of her poems, the parts before she gets into the fairy tale. In these parts Sexton tells the reader what she wants them to take away from the retelling of the fairy tale. For instance in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" Sexton opens with

"No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
ares and legs made of Limoges,
Lips like Vin Du Rhone,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes,
open and shut." (3)

I feel like these lines capture everything Sexton is trying to say in the poem. Because these opening parts were, I think, the main device she used to transform the fairy tale, I kept wondering why the fairy tail needed to be retold. It seemed that for the most part Sexton stays faithful to the tail she is trying to cast a different light on, apart from her running commentary throughout the poem. And in some poems, even the commentary on the tale is so subtle that it seems like Sexton is re-telling it verbatim. For instance in "Cinderella", while she does cut the poem up with moments like the one previously mentioned here, she also has moments where it felt like she was absent from the poem.

"Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted the twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat" (54)

Sometimes it felt like Sexton was simply writing down the details of the fairy tale because she had to, not because they were transformed by her own voice. So the question I immediately asked myself is why not just leave out the fairy tale part and let the opening poem speak for itself?

When I was reading the poems I tried to imagine what the poem would be like if Sexton left out the fairy tail part. For some, I think the poem would have actually been stronger without the fairytale. Rapunzel is one of these poems. If the poem ended at “A woman / who loves a woman / is forever young." (39) I think Sexton would have been able to say everything she needed, and would have strengthened the poem. So the ultimate question I have after reading "Transformations" is why did she have to, or choose to, retell the entire tale.