For your fifth major poem assignment, you will write a poem in free verse (no rhyme scheme, end rhyme, or specific meter) that is based on, or alludes to, a myth, legend, or fairy tale. To help you with this assignment, refer to "Chapter 27: Enchantments: Myths and Fairy Tales" in Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius. Also, below is information from a presentation I have given that explains my own strategies for incorporating myth, legend, and fairy tale in poetry. Please use these strategies in creating your own poem.
How to Revisit and Revise Fairy Tales, Myths, and Legends in Poetry
- There are countless ways to use these tales in poetry, from using a single allusion to a tale in a poem to carrying a fairy tale, myth, or legend motif throughout a poem to completely rewriting the story in poetic form. And there are countless ways to go about each of these methods. I tend to gravitate toward the second method, but I have certainly done the first and appreciated the second in others' works.
- One of the most common ways to use a classic tale in a poem is to write a Persona Poem or, what is sometimes called a Character Voice Poem, in which you lose yourself in a character (in this case, a fairy tale, mythic, or legendary character). To do this, you take on the persona or the character of someone else and speak in that character's voice, using the first person. Persona poems work best when the reader is aware from the beginning that this is a persona (rather than the writer) speaking, so using a fairy tale, myth, or legend character (a character that is easily identifiable from the beginning) usually works well for a Persona Poem. The character doesn't even have to be human. You might choose to speak from the voice of a dog, a bird, an insect, or an inanimate object like a plant or a chair in the fairy tale. The main point is that once you pick this person/thing, you must decide what this character's voice would be like. In other words, you must decide what diction and syntax would be appropriate for this person/thing and what this entity's innermost emotions, anxieties, and tribulations would be. Sometimes, however, you might put contemporary diction on a fairy tale character to make a statement about the change in times, etc., but whichever way you go, your diction and syntax should be consistent throughout the poem, and your purpose in choosing that diction and syntax should be clear.
- Whenever using fairy tales, myths, or legends in poetry (or any reference to a well-known story) surprise your reader in some way. Don't just re-tell a story that everyone already knows. Poetry should illuminate, so try to reveal something interesting or unusual. Tell the part of the story that hasn't been told or tell it from a perspective from which it hasn't been told before.
- Consider focusing on a character who is not the main character in the original tale. Along with giving readers a part of the story that is a surprise, it gives readers a different perspective of the same story they think they know so well. Also, many times, as in this case, the idea of perspective is part of the point. I wrote a poem once called "Wicked Stepsister Two Speaks to a Brother Grimm." It is a poem for the outsider, the one left behind, and while Cinderella has always been portrayed as the outsider in the home of her stepmother and stepsisters, in the world of fairy tales, she is the beautiful heroine who triumphs over her wicked step-family. But what are the so-called "wicked" family members' stories? Why are they the way they are? Wicked stepsister two, in particular, seems to have the least choice in being labeled as evil, as a product of both her mother and her older sister before her.
- Be as specific as possible. Details are the lifeblood of good poetry, and you have the added advantage in dealing with fairy tales, myths, and legends that they tend to be rather vague. Just adding details that are specific helps to surprise and delight the reader because it is something he or she hasn't seen before in regard to the tale. Ex: "Gretel," by Mary Jo Bang
- Do some research. Use the internet to find terms that someone in your speaker's or your main character's position might use, or, if appropriate, information about this person's job or household. You want to seem as authentic as possible, and these techniques will help your poem to sound interesting, not using the same run-of-the-mill words or information that everyone knows.
- At the same time, avoid sounding like an encyclopedia entry. Try using metaphor, personification, alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme (not end-rhyme) (You don't have to use all of these, but try to use some of them).
- Title: If writing a persona poem, name who the person/entity is in your title! Your poem is not meant to be a riddle. The fascination is not in creating a voice so that the reader has to try to figure out who it is. The reader should know who it is in the beginning. The fascination should be in the interesting outlook this speaker has and the interesting way this speaker has of saying it or perhaps the poem is telling us a side to this person's life we didn't know.
- Use the fairy tale, myth, or legend as a means of addressing a bigger message, one about discrimination, cruelty, feminism, the nature of love, envy, the superficial world, aging, appearances versus reality, or any bigger issue to which you can connect the fairy tale.
As always, try for more showing than telling. Show the particulars of a specific situation. Try to illuminate the ordinary, describe it in a new and original way, try using metaphor and/or personification of inanimate objects in your description. As you're revising, use alliteration and/or assonance, slant internal rhyme, etc. To determine where the line breaks should be, think about rhythm and judge which words you want to emphasize the most. Also, use enjambment to help with flow. Finally, after you have finished or as you are molding it (not before you start writing), look at your poem as a whole. Is there some universal, philosophical message you can get from this poem? Try to find a way of conveying that in the poem without stating it directly. The best way to do this is by letting an image or images represent the idea rather than stating the idea.
Things to include in every poem you write:
- showing more than telling
- conflict
- originality
- energy (of sound and sense)
- complete sentences (MOST of the time)
Things to avoid in every poem you write:
- cliches and word packages
- most adverbs, especially ones that end in "ly"
- abstractions like "joy," "happiness," "fear," "excitement," "anguish," etc.
- heavy-handed or melodramatic words like "heart," "eternal," "desire," "dearest," "yearn," "bliss," "embrace,"etc.,
- archaic words like "alas," "amiss," "upon," "farewell," "thee," "thou," "thy," "beloved," "thine," etc.
- perspective adjectives like "beautiful," "lovely," "ugly," "terrible," "fantastic," "surreal," "enchanting," etc. (Words that don't give a specific image)
- clunky words (basically, words with four or more syllables)
Before you write, read back through the first poems in your reading. Pick the poems you like the best and try to pattern your poem after them but using your own subject and your own details.
Format:
- The poem should be typed using 12 or 11 pt. font size and Times New Roman or Arial font style.
- Your name and e-mail address should be in the top, right corner of the page(s)
- By the left margin, you should type the title of your poem, double space, and begin typing the text of your poem (which should be single spaced except for the breaks in stanzas).
- Unless you feel the poem needs to be double-spaced (e.g. you like the lighter feel on the page, it's a poem about isolation and having isolated lines seems appropriate, etc.) single space the poem. This is just to say that either is acceptable, but there should be a reason why you choose one over the other; you should do what is right for that particular work rather than just go along with the formatting that is already in your word processing program.
- Do not center the poem in the middle of the page or center each line of the poem. Again, the poem should begin at the left margin. If you would like to play with the spacing before and between lines and words, do so as suits the subject of your poem. Most serious contemporary poetry uses these devices very subtly, though, so keep that in mind. Look at the published poetry in your books as examples.
- Do not capitalize the first letter of every line. This is an antiquated convention to which most contemporary poetry does not adhere. Only capitalize the first letter of every sentence in the poem. If your word processing program automatically capitalizes the first letter of every line, turn auto-correct off or edit every line manually.
Examples of Fairy Tales, Myths, and Legends in Contemporary Poetry
"Hansel in the Witch House" by Susannah Sheffer
"Demeter, the Pilgrim" by Cleopatra Mathis
"Cinderella," by Olga Broumas
"Complaint of Achilles' Heel" by Charles Jensen
"Snow White Turns 39," by Anne Sheldon
"Orpheus," by Robert Kelly
"Wolf," by Carina Bissett
"Rapunzel," by David Trinidad
"Snow White: The Prince," by Alice Friman
"Don't Bother the Earth Spirit" by Joy Harjo
"Christopher Robin Returns to the Hundred Acre Wood" by Kelly Whiddon
"Swans and Mosquitoes" by Kelly Whiddon
Workshops and Written Critiques:
Big Group Critiques:
Once all the students have posted their poems to the online peer workshop assignment ("Poem 3 Workshop: Upload Your Draft and Critique Others' Drafts" on D2L), every student in the class will be able to read every other student's poem. Reading every student's poem is not a requirement, however. Some students will be assigned to the "Big Group" (the group of students whose poems, for this specific assignment, will be critiqued by the entire class and by me). Every student in the class will be in the "Big Group" for at least one of the seven major poem assignments. The list of students in the Big Group will be in "Poem 3 Workshop: Upload Your Draft and Critique Others' Drafts" discussion board on D2L.
If you are in the Big Group workshop, be sure to check "Grades" in D2L and search for "Poem 3 Draft" because this is where I will place my critique of your poem. In grading your final poem, I will expect your revision to have addressed each issue that I have commented on in my critique. You should also read the critiques of your classmates in the online workshop and make changes where appropriate. If you disagree with a piece of advice from another student, check to see if any others give you the same advice. If there are a number of students who point out the same issue or if I point it out, address the issue. You may come up with a way to solve the problem that is different from what students have suggested, but you should try to solve the problem. You can always come to me for advice on specific issues as well. Revising your poem after the draft you submit to workshop is a requirement and how well you pay attention and use the comments of the professor and peers is part of your grade.
Small Group and Extra Credit Critiques:
Along with the students in the Big Group, you are also required to write an online critique of one poem outside of the Big Group (I call this the "Small Group"). It doesn't matter whose poem you choose for this, except that it should be someone who hasn't yet received a critique from another student. If everyone has received a critique, you may submit another critique for someone.
You will also receive extra credit in participation for every poem you respond to beyond your one Small Group critique. Beyond extra credit, this is also a chance to help out your fellow students and for them to help you out as well.
Again, if you receive written critiques of your poem, be sure to use those critiques to revise your poem before you turn it in. If your peer gives advice that you are unsure of, you may always ask me about specific questions regarding your poem or bring the entire poem to my office hours for me to go over. Revising the draft before you turn in the final poem is a requirement even if you don't receive a written critique (which does happen at times). Again, you can always make an appointment with me for a D2L chat, Teams meeting, or office visit if you need extra feedback. If you have received no feedback at all, keep in mind that you need to make changes/improvements anyway and try to determine yourself what would enhance the poem. Revising is the key to good writing.
Notes:
- There will be separate due dates for Poem 3 Draft, Poem 3 Big Group and Small Group Critiques, and the final, revised version of Poem 3. See these dates on the Poem 3 Workshop (Upload Your Draft and Critique Others' Drafts) assignment and Poem 3 (Revision) Upload dropbox in D2L, as well as the weekly schedule.
- I only critique the poems in the Big Group. If you are not in the Big Group and would like comments from me on your poem, you need to come to my virtual office hours on our Brightspace/D2L chatroom or email me to set up an appointment for a Microsoft Teams meeting online or an in-person meeting in my office or somewhere else on campus (See "Office Hours" on the syllabus).
- Writing can be a lonely enterprise, but you are all in this class because you are interested in it, and you have a group of people with you who share your interest. Take advantage of that. It can be hard and intimidating to find critique partners and beta readers with strangers online; it's much easier with a classroom of peers from your school working on the same assignment.
Why Use Fairy Tales, Legends, or Myths in Poetry? Or—Why I Have Used Them in My Poetry
- All poetry is metaphor, so you have to decide what you are going to use to convey that comparison: As a poet, you are saying, This experience I’m having or had is similar to this other thing.
- Using fairy tales, myths, and legends as that “thing” to tap into a different level of consciousness is transformative.
- These types of stories are dramatic and flawed, and any aspect of real life that uses them as a metaphor tends to be amplified by the timelessness of the problems the poem conveys.
- Fairy tale allusions in particular immediately transport the reader to childhood, which not only helps to provide nostalgia, it also suggests, once again, that the thing you’re describing is deep seated and rooted in the very nexus of our origins, is something that is either a universal archetype floating through the cosmos and a part of all of us or is something that one learns very young and perhaps even in infancy.
- Fairy tales, myth, and legends connect us to each other because they are among the most commonly known tales in our culture and are often how we first learn about the world.
- Because society and most people's world views have changed so completely throughout history, and because fairy tales, myths, and legends represent the societies of their writers and the much more ancient folk cultures from which they stem, there are ample changes to be made. Making these changes not only better reflects contemporary ways of thinking, the contrast in the older and newer world views emphasizes the importance of the changes that have taken place in the intervening years.
Some History of Fairy Tale Allusions in Poetry:
Using fairy tales in poetry is nothing new, but we can thank the second wave feminists for a surge of poetry relating or alluding to fairy tales in the 1960s and 1970s. These feminists looked at fairy tales and the fact that they were largely still being read to children and molding the way children think and realized the ideas espoused in the narratives no longer fit the time period. In Marcia K. Leiberman's 1972 essay, “’Some Day My Prince Will Come:’ Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale,” she points out that most heroines of classic fairy tales have the following qualities: they are passive, they are always the most beautiful woman in their tale, they are often unintelligent, and they are always the youngest woman in their tale. Leiberman makes the argument that fairy tales acculturate their readers to believing the most important qualities a woman can possess are beauty and youth and that women should be passive and submissive and wait to be rescued by their "princes." Backlash to the ideas conveyed to girls in fairy tales started being represented in poetry, and perhaps the most well-known example of this is Anne Sexton's 1971 poetry collection, Transformations.
Maxine Kumin says of Anne Sexton, “above all else, she was attracted to the fairy tales of Anderson and Grimm, which her beloved Nana had read to her when she was a child. They were for her, perhaps, what Bible stories and Greek myths had been for other writers” (xxviii).
Transformations, by Anne Sexton
- retells fairy tales but using a modern world and modern concerns.
- presents the experiences of women and women writers
- is autobiographical
- suggests the power of the female writer.
- suggests strength comes from writing and from carrying on a tradition of female storytellers.
- begins with an invitation to the reader to re-enter childhood and the world of fairy tales: The Gold Key
Examples of Fairy Tales, Myths, and Legends in Contemporary Poetry
"Hansel in the Witch House" by Susannah Sheffer
"Demeter, the Pilgrim" by Cleopatra Mathis
"Cinderella," by Olga Broumas
"Complaint of Achilles' Heel" by Charles Jensen
"Snow White Turns 39," by Anne Sheldon
"Orpheus," by Robert Kelly
"Wolf," by Carina Bissett
"Rapunzel," by David Trinidad
"Snow White: The Prince," by Alice Friman
"Don't Bother the Earth Spirit" by Joy Harjo
"Christopher Robin Returns to the Hundred Acre Wood" by Kelly Whiddon
"Swans and Mosquitoes" by Kelly Whiddon