Says the Forest to the Girl by Sally Rosen Kindred
Porkbelly Press, 2018
Sally Rosen Kindred’s chapbook, Says the Forest to the Girl, is a thoughtful, twisted homage to old fairy-tales, particularly to the women who feature in them. Kindred takes stories familiar to us and refracts them in a shattered mirror, changing the perspectives and often remixing them.
My favorite is “Said Rapunzel to the Wolf.” It frames the story of Rapunzel in a way that critiques how mothers can put heavy expectations on their daughters, dreams and plans they had for them becoming more real than the girls themselves: “What was worse / than her casting me into your woods to die / was how, betrayed, she cut my hair, as if // the real daughter nested there.” The poem’s speaker wishes for a wolf to change her story, a way to change her fate.
It isn’t only the subject matter which makes the chapbook so interesting. Kindred’s stylistic elements also draw attention, particularly her fascinating use of hyphenation, making new adjectives by pressing two words together. Some examples include “bristle-close” from “The Woman at the Crows’ Funeral,” the “wolf-dark wool” in “Late Dream with Winter Coat,” and the “soot-bright sky” in “Of Crows.” These combinations effectively punch meaning into understanding in a few short words.
The best part of the chapbook is the agency it bestows on its characters: letting Sleeping Beauty escape her story to tuck Little Red into bed like an older sister, having Rapunzel ask for a wolf to shake things up, seeing Red better able to carry her burdens than she could at the beginning of her story because she was allowed to grow up. Kindred breathes new life into familiar characters with a unique spin, and the power women hold in Says the Forest to the Girl reads like a benediction for her readers who might wish to change their own stories.
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Emily Baker is a student and writer from East Tennessee. She has had poems published in two separate editions of Lee Review and is a member of the writing honor society, Sigma Tau Delta. This is her first chapbook review.