Anne Sexton's Transformations

Transformations was actually my first introduction to Anne Sexton. Not the name Anne Sexton, nor the literary references, but the actually sitting and reading of Anne Sexton.

I found two things:

1. Fairy tales can be overdone if read and written in succession.

2. Anne Sexton has a very enchanting voice, which makes me stop breathing at times.

I’ll be pithy about the former since it is a general comment about the book as a whole. Sexton’s retelling of fairy tales is just that: a retelling. The stories hardly changed from the original versions, at least from what I remembered and researched upon reading this book. There were a few fairy tales that I had never heard of – “The Gold Key,” “The White Snake,” and Iron Hans” to name a few – which read as a new story to me, but that is only because they were, in fact, a new story to me. I often found myself very aware of Sexton’s formula for writing (not rewriting, as I said before that I felt these were simply “retellings”) these tales. Each poem starts with her voice, a moral or explanation/introduction of sorts, and then retells the tale. Her voice is clear in the first few stanzas, since this is where her take on any given tale is told, but the actual fairy tales are quite textbook with a few exceptions.

Now, onto the latter comment. Throughout the book, Sexton’s language really made me stop to marvel at its simplicity. Her similes were so wonderfully subtle in their imagery and diction that it made me envious that I did not think of such beautiful references:

“But the princess smiles like warm milk” (p 13)

“. . . with a daughter as lovely as a grape.” (p 18)

“ . . . as clean as an almond.” (p 26)

“One with two eyes,/as common as pennies.” (p 61)

“. . . letting her arms go loose as kite tails,” (p 73)

“. . . at each window secrets came in like gas.” (p 75)

These, along with other images and perfectly worded segments, were what got me through the book with ease. Yes, the fairy tales were easy to read, as they were story-like in their telling, but it was the craft of certain lines that made the read worth it.

Another aspect of the book that I kept noting was the references to, what I gathered to be, Pop Culture. The first to grab my attention was in “Rumpelstiltskin” where Sexton writes, “He speaks up as tiny as an earphone/with Truman’s asexual voice:” (p 17). This is followed by references to Isadora Duncan (p 39) and Al Jolson (p 54) among others and I am curious to see what others make of those references.

I would read Sexton again, if for nothing other than her unique use of language, but I might be more apt to lean toward one of her books where the theme requires a less formulaic approach.