I write a lot of poems in which the speaker is
someone other than myself.
Sometimes, I know exactly who that speaker is.
I mean it's someone very specific and sometimes,
less so.
This is a-- this speaker is a girl in a folktale.
Not necessarily one specific folktale,
but she is a girl, a sister, who appears in many folktales.
And she is the sister who, because of whose birth,
the brother or brothers are banished and sometimes changed
into animals.
Therefore, she's the one who must enchant them.
And of course, the version that everyone knows of this
is Hansel and Gretel, where he is not turned into an animal,
but he is caged by the witch.
And so on.
And she becomes a rescuer.
And in all of these stories, there's
one called the Six Swans, there's one called the Seven
Ravens, there's a one called Little Brother and Little
Sister.
These are all Grimm fairy tales.
She is the savior, the rescuer.
And it's very strange because she's always the younger one.
She's younger than the brothers but she becomes
a kind of mother to them.
This is from a whole sequence of poems called "Voices
from the Forest" and they're all spoken by archetypes,
if you will.
It sounds like such a scholarly word but--
[LAUGHS] characters, types of characters,
that appear over and over in folktales.
And this is just one of them.
"Flesh and Blood."
This is my brother, the fat caged boy.
This is my brother, the spotted fawn.
These are my brothers, the Seven Ravens.
These are my brother, my brothers, the Six Mute Swans.
I have a plan for my brother, the boy.
I have a hermit shack for my fawn.
I've cut off a finger to save my Ravens.
I've given up speech to save my Swans.
Help me, whispers my brother the boy.
Play with me, begs my high stepping fawn.
Why were you born?
lament the Ravens.
You caused our exile, accuse the Swans.
Brothers, my brothers, I am your sister.
I am a woman.
I will be a wife.
I am your face in the altered mirror.
I will give you back your life.
Brother, my boy, you'll grow thin and forget me.
You play with another brother, my fawn.
Human, my seven, you will hunt ravens.
Human, you'll leave me, my six mute Swans."