The  Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales
The German myths shrunken into children's tales with the coming of Christianity might have been lost with the arrival of the modern era were it not for the methodical and comprehensive work of brothers Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm and the latter's wife, Dortchen Wild, source of many stories, who is rarely credited. The archetypal power of the stories, especially those with female protagonists, has induced many poets to employ their themes, motifs, and characters. This ample collection stresses the utility of the Grimm tales to women who, like Anne Sexton, Carol Ann Duffy, and Lucille Clifton, find in these "old wives' tales" a repository of strong feminine imagery. But the figures and plots of the tales are too complex to countenance poets who would use the stories for mere polemics, and so the poets at hand include Galway Kinnell and Denise Duhamel, Randall Jarrell and Olga Broumas, Jane Yolen and Allen Tate. A strong, readable, uniformly high-quality anthology.Patricia MonaghanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved