The Frog Prince

You all know the story, right?

In varying degrees of kitschiness, with the Princess either kissing the frog or tossing it headfirst into a wall, with and without the "faithful Henry"?

I do  (and the poem at the end of the story always stuck in my memory and always struck me as odd, wondering why the presence of a faithful servant is required at the end of the story. Anyway.), but what I didn't know is that there are so many stories of amphibian suitors, literally from all over the world.

The Frog King; or, Iron Heinrich
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Germany (1812)

( Read more... )

The Queen Who Sought a Drink from a Certain Well
J. F. Campbell, Scotland

( Read more... )

The Maiden and the Frog
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, England

( Read more... )

The Toad-Bridegroom
Zong In-Sob, Korea

( Read more... )

There are all from the collection of Professor D. L. Ashliman from the University of Pittsburgh.

On there, there's also a great comparison between the two German versions - and their translations.  I've always favoured the newer beginning " In den alten Zeiten, wo das Wünschen noch geholfen hat..." ( "In olden times, when wishing still did some good" which sounds prettier than anything in German).

Really a fun and informative site for fairy tale lovers!

Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-- Billy Collins


Even though I have already earned myself the name of the ultimate Queen of Nerds in tomorrow's seminar on teaching poetry last week, I think I will still take the above gem and hand it in as our "poem of the week".
(I gained that title by answering the question whether we know a poem by heart [a poem? Who doesn't know a poem by heart??? It's beyond me...] with a heartfelt "yes" and added, when asked why [think: why on earth], that I like learning poems by heart. I was looked at as though I came from another planet. Seriously. I refuse to feel ashamed of actually being interested in the course content.)

Our lecturer said in the first session we might bring a poem of the week, but last week no one has submitted one - not that anyone ever will. I think our seminar could do with that one, as they hate analysis with a passion. Most of them do because they are seriously bad at it, not because they really object to it, though.

Oooh, or this one:

Sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

... I wish I could hand in Billy Collins' collected works, really. This one is also awesome: ( Marginalia )

And this one: ( On turning ten )

EDIT: this site - which happens to be hosted by none other than Billy Collins - is awesome. It is an "A Poem a Day" site by the Library of Congress made for US Highschool students, and there are many modern poems on there, very playful ones, some with a one-lined explanation of what the poem is about, which strikes me as superfluous, but I know that some students will probably love it. Great site!

On there, there are gems like this: ( Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale )