Fairy Talesby e.e. cummings; illustrated by Meilo So
Just as he broke the mold for modern poetry, e.e. cummings shows us how a fairy tale should be written in these four stories for children, reissued recently by Liveright Publishing.
A shy, housebound elephant makes a friend – a delicate butterfly who beats a frail wing against his door. The unexpected company at first petrifies the elephant, but he manages to muster the courage to invite the creature in. The story’s a metaphor for events in the poet’s own life, with him as the lonely and lumbering behemoth meeting his little grandson for the first time.
Similarly, it’s not hard to imagine it's again cummings standing in for an empty house that prefers a songbird’s company to that of coarse and noisy humans. The stories have a singsong quality to the telling, and lend themselves to new discoveries and layers of meaning with each reading.
The end notes say the poet wrote several for his own daughter, Nancy, sometime before his wife left him and remarried a man who kept father and daughter apart until the girl was grown. His anguish fills every line, but the stories are ultimately uplifting and affirm the vitality of love and friendship.
So’s expressionistic watercolors underwhelm, however, and add nothing to the narrative except some jarring color.
Rating: *\*\*\*\
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