Saturday, February 14, 2009
Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a modern fable about love. Here is one of my favorites, by Alan Ziegler from The Swan Song of Vaudeville. © Zoo Press. To hear Garrison Keillor read the poem, visit “The Writer’s Almanac.” Here is the full text of the fable/poem.
Love At First Sight
It was a novelty-store and he went in just for the novelty of it. She was in front of the counter, listening to the old proprietor say: “I have here one of those illusion paintings, a rare one. You either see a beautiful couple making love, or a skull. They say this one was used by Freud himself on his patients—if at first sight you see the couple, then you are a lover of life and love. But if you focus on the skull first, you’re closely involved with death, and there’s not much hope for you.”
With that, the proprietor unwrapped the painting. They both hesitated, looked at the picture, then at each other. They both saw the skull. And have been together ever since.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
This blog focuses on fables, but when Joelle Hann submitted, “The Sun Rises and Sets on You,” a modern update on the Haida myth, “The Raven Steals the Light,” I couldn’t resist putting it up on the site. Joelle recasts the old man as a disgruntled, out-of-work banker holding the light of the world hostage in his shoe. New York City and all of its inhabitants toil away in darkness, while he refuses to let go of his treasure. The Rasco tricks him out of his little bit of wealth and scatters it to the wind. Joelle says she wrote this years ago, but given our current financial crisis, her retelling of this ancient folktale seems prescient.
The Sun Rises and Sets on You by Joelle Hann
after “The Raven Steals the Light”
Before New York was an important city, before electricity surged into the huge skyscrapers to light offices on each floor, before subways and tramlines shuttled people to and fro, before telephones supplied information for the millions of ambitious workers, and even before the birds and the rabbits and the fish disappeared, an old man lived on the bank of the East River, warming his hands over a fire in an oil-drum. Whether he was handsome or strong or finely dressed didn’t matter much because he was blind and the city existed in a permanent state of half-dark, neither bright with sunrise or mellow with sunset, but in between twilight and full-night.
Because at that time New York, the five boroughs, the tristate area, and the whole eastern seaboard was dark. Dark as tar, as soot, black as black sheep’s wool, black as the sky during thunderstorms, black as the bottom of a man’s shoe. (Continued)
Friday, November 28, 2008
About ten years ago, when I was working on “Scratching for Something,” I was fascinated with the back page classified ad section of The New York Press. At that time, the back page classifieds hosted all kinds of human appeal. Guileless personal ads, physics, ads thanking St. Jude, pornography and prostitution, cures for various physical and mental health problems. It seemed like the grittiest portrait of humanity at its most vulnerable. I felt like the back page classifieds had something in common with the modern fables I was writing. As an experiment, I published some them on The New York Press back page. Click on the links below to see them.
Wings
Centipede
Knitting
I published the prose poems/fables anonymously. One of my readers published this message on the back page:
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Birds by Marie Hines, 2003
Marie Hines combines a modern fable with a traditional Art Historical theme to create this provocative take on the annunciation. Hines’ composition uses familiar tropes: flowers, intense color, a winged messenger, and a pregnant Madonna. But Hines updates this classic theme by combining the ages-old story with a modern fable called The Birds.
The Birds chronicles the invasion and occupation of a woman’s most personal space—her home—by a group of heavenly, but unwanted, guests. The angel, in the form of a hummingbird with a deeply masculine voice, marginalizes the female protagonist. When she recovers from the humiliation and tries to stand up for herself, he sics his henchmen on her and sends her into permanent exile.
By bringing this particular fable into the mix, Hines puts a feminist spin on well-trodden annunciation territory. Consider these older examples:
The conventional approach to the annunciation can be seen in this painting by Jean Hey. The Madonna is portrayed as a beautiful, submissive princess. Dressed in royal red and blue, she regally accepts her duty to bear the Son of God in spite of what she must sacrifice.
By contrast, in a painting entitled la Orana Maria, Gauguin gives us a peasant Madonna. Half-dressed and uncivilized, Gauguin’s Mary lives in a paradise where motherhood is easy, natural, and uncomplicated. (Continued)
Thursday, November 6, 2008
I was chatting with a man in the obstetrician’s waiting room when suddenly I realized that he was pregnant too. “I’m due in September,” he said, smiling proudly and rubbing his belly.
I should have been polite. Should have just said congratulations and left it at that, but instead I blurted, “But, you’re a man. You can’t be a mother.”
His smile disappeared and he shifted in his chair, sulking over my remark. “I am going to be a good mother,” he said. “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”
“Of course not,” I said, trying to sound sincere, hoping the subject would drop, but the man was provoked.
“You don’t understand what I’ve been through,” he said, telling me about the painful surgery and the expensive attorneys he’d hired to win both maternity and paternity rights. “It’s unfair,” he said, “It’s discriminatory. If I want to be a mother, I’m entitled.” He squared his jaw and stared angrily at me, as if I were the one trying to prevent him. He held my gaze for a full second, then dismissed me with a roll of his eyes. “Well,” he snorted, “I guess I can’t expect a woman to understand.”
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Bones were discovered in my crawlspace, and police arrived to investigate, sifting the dirt for clues. When they learned that the remains were centuries old, they closed the case, and archeologists were brought in. “She was a woman about your size,” they told me, “probably one of the early settlers in the region.” The entire skeleton had been exposed with their careful shovels and brushes. One of them pointed to a thick seam in the dead woman’s pelvis where a break had healed. “Perhaps from a fall or in childbirth,” he explained. I left the skeleton undisturbed in the basement floor, along with the grid of string woven across the space to partition discoveries. I visit the bones every morning, wondering how so many experts could learn nothing of importance. How a life cannot be strung together with ancient clues, and how the secrets of a woman can disappear with her flesh.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
She had been born with wings, huge magnificent dragonfly wings twelve feet in span, reflective, iridescent wings that made a thunderous, buzzing sound. She would fly with her mouth open and lips distended, gulping up songbirds and frightened sparrows. People gathered to watch for her but rarely saw her. When she did appear, she came, startlingly, from nowhere, fast and ferocious. Her face was like lightning, so bright they had to put their hands over their eyes and fall to the ground to avoid being hit.
A slightly different version of Wings was first published in the back page classified ad section of The New York Press
She had hundreds of tiny legs that she kept concealed under her clothes, and fine antennae tied back into her hair. At night she would unfurl her silky feelers and massage the air with her rippling rows of legs. Her body was segmented and she could move along the walls like a crustaceous snake. During the day she gave all appearances of being a normal woman and nobody knew her secret, careful as she was to reveal herself only when alone and in the dark.
A slightly different version of Centipede was first published in the back page classified ad section of The New York Press.
There was a man who had hands for feet. He wore mittens for socks and walked with a skittering sideways step. During the day he collected material: strands of thread, rope and hair; things he could twist into a kind of yarn. The evenings he spent knitting with his four arms, moving like a monkey in a frantic game of cat’s cradle. His work filled every room, strung from corner to corner. He would lie in his handiwork as he fastened it together, swinging softly like a quiet spider in a woven web.
A slightly different version of Knitting was first published in the back page classified ad section of The New York Press.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
There was a woman who lived in a big city, dressed like a fisherman, and went around with a net and bucket. She never left the city, but her skin had a ruddy glow, as though touched by the sun and salty wind. She would fish in open public spaces, in sidewalks and lobbies, sitting patient and still with her net poised, staring at a spot on the floor. Once in a while she would scoop her net, clicking the rim loudly on the dry pavement. Onlookers would shake their heads or laugh out loud. But, from time to time, a wet fish would appear flipping and struggling in the net. She would dump it into her bucket, where it would swim quietly in a circle. People were amazed at first, but quickly decided that it was some kind of trick, that she was just a street performer, and they would toss a coin thoughtlessly into her bucket.
