most astonishing about these transformations is that they end up being as wholly personal as Anne Sexton's most intimate poems, coming curiously, for all their story-sound, from as deep a place. C.K. Williams writes: "Her metaphoric strength has never been greater - really funny, among other things, a dark, dark laughter" The tales sh has transormed include "Snow White", "Rumpelstiltskin", "Rapunzel", "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," The Frog Prince," and "Red Riding Hood" They create a wonderful little universe, and sho the poet in a new role, with a voice strangely prophetic. In his preface Kurt Vonnegut ways: "I asked a poet friend one time what it was that poets did, and he thought awhile and then he told me, " They extend the language.: Anne Sexton does a deeper favor for me: she domesticates my terror, examines it ad describes it, teaches it some tricks which willl amuse me, then lets it gallop into my forest once more. Drawings by Barbara Swan

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