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.