Songs & Fables
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Authors
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Issue Date
1990
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Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
This is one of three Torre books identical in format that I was able to get in a group from Scottsbooks. Might it mean that I now have all of Torre's fable books? Like the other Torre books I have found, it is beautifully produced, set by hand and bound by hand. This book has twenty-one offerings on 118 pages. Each of the writings has at least one accompanying full-page colored illustration cut from wood, and these seem to me to be again the strength of the book. Many of the verses here are directed at specific sites in New York City. The Electronic Toyshop (38) finishes detailing the wild video, robot, and other battery-driven, noise-making toys with an accolade to simple quiet toys like a Pulcinello marionette: you can thank your stars for these quiet clowns/Who will soon be your truest friends in town,/Who will lift you up when you're falling down,/When the rest of the world is frantic (42) . After a good description of various importunate clods, we read at the end of The Trumpeter Swans & the Canada Geese (43) that maybe somebody has done similar unthinking things. If so, you're acquainted with Canada geese/In human form, who imagine they please,/Who, as they unthinkingly riot and shout,/Wear your patience thin and their welcome out. Among the clearer fables here are The Cricket & the Frog (87) and The Swallow & the Wren (109), both with good illustrations. I am particularly taken with Why Cats Like to Eat Mice (93) and The Months (102), in which the author distributes the days of the hated month of August to all the other months and thus creates an eleven-month calendar. Torre marks his moral frequently by using parentheses to surround it.
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Publisher
The Inkwell Press
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Identifier
6648 (Access ID)