Vonnegut wrote the Foreword in Transformations, a book of "poem-stories" based on seventeen Grimm fairy tales, written by Anne Sexton with illustrations by Barbara Swan. It was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1971.
Summary[]
Anne Sexton, by Elsa Dorfman, c. 1970
When once told that what poets do is "extend the language", Vonnegut found he was indifferent to that. What Anne Sexton does is domesticate terror, examine and describe it, teach it amusing tricks, and then set it free again. The two writers don’t know each other well, but met at a party for Dan Wakefield, who had just published Going All the Way. To be interesting to her, Vonnegut showed her his chart of the story of Cinderella, in which she begins at a deeply low point, moved lower when her stepsisters went to the party without her, then increased by steps as the fairy godmother appeared to grant her various wishes, and crashed at midnight, although not as low as it was in the beginning, since she still had her memories. Then the glass slipper fit, and she became infinitely happy forever. This was based on the English translation, while in the original French, her shoe was fur. Now Sexton is retelling the Brothers Grimm’s version in poetry. Vonnegut cannot explain these poems, but he also quit teaching in colleges because "it seemed so criminal to explain works of art". Once, when he had to explain James Joyce’s Dubliners, a work he knew well, he opened his mouth, but nothing came out.[1]
- ↑ "Foreword", Transformations, Anne Sexton, pp. vii-x.