Bow Wow

Just before school let out in late May, a teacher from a high school in South Carolina sent me an e-mail. He was using an anthology of poems-for-young-people. In it was my poem about Gretel. Of Hansel and Gretel fame. He said his students liked my poem because it was like a story. They didn’t have to worry about some deep meaning. In the story, Gretel had the power to get out of another jam and used it. First a dangerous witch, then a demanding, unreasonable husband. So that was that. Nothing covert or cryptic.

So just we’re all on the same page, this morning let’s take a look at the poem-in- question before I write more about it.

Gretel

said she didn’t know anything about ovens

so the witch crawled in to show her

and Bam! went the big door.

Then Gretel strolled out to the shed where

her brother was fattening, knocked down

a wall and lifted him high in the air.

Not long after the adventure in the forest,

Gretel married so she could live happily.

Her husband was soft like Hansel. Her

husband liked to eat.

Ever after was the size of a kitchen.

Gretel remembered when times were better.

She laughed out loud when the witch

popped like a weenie.

“Gretel! Stop fooling around and fix

my dinner.”

“There’s something wrong with this oven,”

she says, her eyes bright as treasure.

“Can you come here a minute?”

“Gretel” really is an easy-to-read poem. And the students are right; there isn’t a hidden meaning that only certain people are privy to. The reason the teacher from South Carolina wrote to me, though, wasn’t just to say his students preferred “Gretel” to other poems in the anthology. He wanted to say how happy he was that the students started to look at how the poem meant, not just what it meant.

Freed from the handcuffs of meaning, they concentrated on other things: the way the poem looked on the page, how the lines ended, what the transitions did, how the pace mattered. If the poem was a house, not what the house meant, but how the house was built.

Especially how the poem ended. Some students argued vigorously for cutting the last line. Others disagreed. So let’s take a look at the ending. First the way I wrote it, then the way a few students preferred.

“There’s something wrong with this oven,”

she says, her eyes bright as treasure.

“Can you come here a minute?”

Or

“There’s something wrong with this oven,”

she says, her eyes bright as treasure.

The malcontents argued that the final line was not necessary because it fell into the it-goes-without-saying category. Others pushed back, saying that the last line was essential to ensure that the Reader really gets what Gretel is about to do in order to escape this domestic ever after.

The poet Carolyn Kizer said, “I like poems with a sting in the tail.” And I’ve asked for that -- or something like that -- from students who showed me poems that needed to be plugged into a socket so they could throw off sparks.

Now the students from South Carolina made me look at my poem again. Where’s the sting? And is there more delightful venom in the 3-line, original version or in the abbreviated one.

I love the movies, and have used my affection for them as a teacher-of-poetry. So let’s film “Gretel.” It’s basically two scenes. One from the past, one from the present.

In the first two stanzas, Gretel tricks the witch, then celebrates her survival skills with Hansel. It’s a scene of joy and relief. In the later stanzas we see a different Gretel. More subdued and, once again, in someone’s clutches.

In the second big scene, the camera pans the small kitchen, pausing at the oven. We don’t see the husband in another room but we hear him. The camera registers Gretel’s dismay at the stereotypical demand for dinner, then stays close as it dawns on her that what worked once could work again!

Does the movie end on her eyes “bright as treasure?” Or do we also hear her invite her husband into the kitchen one last time?

The teacher asked me which version I preferred, and I wrote to say that since there’s more sting in the shorter version, I agree with the discerning minority. And I promised to take that line away when I collect poems for a new book.

Never to late to learn right? Said the old dog.