May 2008
New poems by Spencer Reece, Jane Hirshfield, Seth Abramson, Liz Waldner, Sandra M. Gilbert, Cathy Park Hong, and others; notebook by Eavan Boland; exchange between Cate Marvin and Joshua Mehigan, and more!
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Daisy Fried
The Bride-Choosing
I was trying to read my 14-month old daughter a Grimm's Fairy Tale this morning, but poets of her generation are narratively-challenged, so I post it here instead. The Bride-Choosing There was once a young Shepherd who wished to get married; but although he knew three Sisters, each one was as pretty as the others, and the choice was therefore so difficult, that he did not know to which to give the preference. So he asked his Mother's advice; and she told him to invite all three of them to supper, and to place a cheese before them and observe how they cut it. The youth did so; and the first Sister ate her cheese, rind and all; the second cut off the rind so hastily, that she cut with it some of the good cheese and threw it all away; but the third Sister pared the rind off very carefully, neither too much nor too little. The Shepherd thereupon told all this to his Mother, and she said, "Take the youngest Sister to wife." And he did so, and lived contentedly and happily with her all his life long. I would have picked the first sister: Better in bed. CommentsDaisy-- So you really think the first sister, who ate rind and all, would have been better in bed? Based on the coarseness of her taste buds, her lack of fine motor skills, her blurred eyesight? If anything, her cheese-eating habits might mean she would seek quantity rather than quality in bed, in which case the young shepherd might have a cheese-eating nymphomaniac for a wife he could not trust to go to market on her own. Seems to me only an idiot would let his mother devise a cheese-eating contest as a way for him to pick his bride. He deserved the Hillary of the litter. John Blackard |
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American Perspectives:
Edward Hirsch
Thursday, May 15
6:00 PM