Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch
Loading...
Authors
Wakoski, Diane
Issue Date
1973
Volume
Issue
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
After 125 pages of poems, there are five Esoteric Fables. Esoteric is well chosen. These texts seem to me to be a long way from Aesop. They have a surrealistic quality. The first runs onto a third page. A buffalo wants to eat mushrooms because he has read about them in the Encyclopedia Britannica. An undetermined object has never learned its identity but is ready to be eaten up by the buffalo when it identifies itself as a puffball mushroom. Instead, the buffalo breaks its teeth on this hard object. The object finally takes to calling itself a rolling stone because of a comment by or about a music group driving by, but is not happy with that name because there is no rolling stone entry in the encyclopedia. More Aesopic, I think, is The Owl and the Snake. The two fall in love with each other, and each wishes and tries in vain to be more like the other. The moral suggests that when you want something extravagant and out of reach, you will become strange, you will be rejected, you will never have what you want, and you will be unhappy. The third is a complex tale that tries to turn the tables on human and animal in a fable. The fourth fable is about a handsome and narcissistic frog with a wart on his nose (133). A nice touch here occurs when Wakoski invites the reader to decide the outcome. The last is The Fable of the Fragile Butterfly. The latter is in fact the postman who is a butterfly in his rich, extensive fantasy life. He turns out to be a magician under the spell of another magician, his sister, who is a monarch butterfly. Wakoski then lists seven endings, the last of which is Who are you? Fable, as Wakoski practices it, takes on whole new functions.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Black Sparrow Press
License
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
DOI
Identifier
5112 (Access ID)