Fairy-tale Logic
Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—
You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.
A.E. Stallings
what it means
Fairytales ask us to do impossible tasks, but we are up to the challenge with our own magic or will to do the excruciating.
Sometimes to survive we betray ourselves.
why I like it
I like mythology and fairy tales, and I like that Stallings knows this world so well she can write authoritatively in the voice of any of the characters or about the genre as a whole. I heard her read this fall, and she was witty and wise. I feel the poem is the same way. It taught me something new about fairy tales and then the ending does this fabulous turn from cheerful to devastating.
craft
Stallings is all about form. She only writes in form, but some how she makes it seem effortless. This sonnet doesn’t feel forced, no weak rhymes. I love the conversational tone. I am a little surprised at the capitalization of the first words. That seems a bit old school for the tone of this poem, but, of course, fairy tales are very old school.