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May 2007

Classic Fairy Tales

Sunday, May 27, 2007

“’Am I not as good a Prince as any other?’ he asked himself as he proudly paced up and down the room. ‘Has not the Master said I seem born to be a Prince?’” --“The Story of the Sham Prince, or The Ambitious Tailor.”
A word to the wise, from three fairy tales.


Good advice, and epiphany.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

“Midnight on Christmas Eve was Ann’s favorite sixty seconds of the year. It was a charmed minute, not just for her, but she imagined, for the entire world.”—“The Book of Miracles,” Edwidge Danticat.
Families get to know each other—an exchange between a father and a daughter, and an act of grace at Christmas.


Instructions you could do without.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

“And strong as the temptation may be, please do not touch the statue. For any mortal contact would mar the surface of the stone, which is like the magnolia blossom itself.” –R.T. Smith, “Docent.” .
A reluctant writer tells us how; an eccentric docent gives us a tour of herself.


Looking at Love

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Christine couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his voice thick with an excitement that she recognized as belonging to the first phase of infatuation, when even speaking about your lover, saying quite ordinary things, is a form of desire.”—Tessa Hadley, “Mother’s Son.”

Looking back on love—three poems by a contemporary master of form, and a mother/son story.