Tell us about fairy tales – do you love them or hate them?

My parents used to buy me Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books (you know, yellow, crimson, olive, etc) as a child. I still have them and re-read them. I fell in love with them all over again as an adult, especially when I researched the earlier versions of some of the fairy tales (the fifteenth-century version of Red Riding Hood, or the early Chinese version of Cinderella.) Dark, dangerous, brutally honest – I do see them in some ways as encrypted messages to women and children about the hidden dangers of their families and their cultures, even about themselves.

How do fairy tales influence your work?

It’s not an influence – it’s more like the fairy tales seize me and then a bunch of poems appear. For instance, when I saw the terrific anime movie, “Jin Roh,” which used a narration of the Perrault version of Little Red Riding Hood to illustrate the love story of a terrorist and a member of the secret police in an alternate-history version of Japan, it just opened up so many possibilities for me in terms of re-tellings of the characters and storyline for poems. “When Red Becomes the Wolf” and “Red Riding Hood at the Car Dealer” were two poems that I ended up writing from that experience. I tend to be inspired by pop-cultural references to the old folk tales, the interesting juxtapositions you can make.

What’s your favourite fairy tale?

Some of my favorite fairy tales are the more obscure – and, probably, most disturbing. “The White Cat” was one of my favorites as a child, in which a prince on a quest encounters an kingdom of people who have been enchanted into cat-form, and he ends up cutting off the cat-princess’ head. Of course there’s a happy ending after that, but still – ick, right? I also really loved the German fairy tale “Allerleirauh” (although it has a whole bunch of really creepy undertones I wouldn’t have recognized as a young person) because of the idea of hiding out as in animal skins seemed appealing to me, as well as those cool enchanted dresses (shining as the sun, pale as the moon, etc.) and the way she uses her wits to escape various dangers and get her prince. “Jorinde and Joringel” is another of my favorites, as well as “The Six Swans.” The legend of Melusine is pretty interesting too, a tale from the 1300s connected to French Bretagne and Luxembourg, about a woman who married a count and taught the people of her village architecture, farming honey and haricots verts, and other useful skills. Of course, they believed she was a witch.

Many of the poems in “Becoming the Villainess” are clearly inspired by pop culture – “The Slayer Asks for a Night Off” comes to mind. How does this process start? And does it mean you get to watch a lot of tv, read a lot, and be able to tell others that yes, you actually are working? (This is one of my favourite parts of being a writer/editor!)

Yes, as a child of the seventies, television was definitely a surrogate parent for me and my little brother, so I grew up reading a lot but was also very knowledgeable about obscure television shows and movies. (We also ate a lot of Twinkies and Doritos. It was the seventies, before organic children’s snacks were cool and artificial coloring was demonized.)
Although I do enjoy being out in nature quite a bit (I’ve lived in some areas of great natural beauty such as Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Port Townsend, Washington, along with my current home in Carlsbad, California) it doesn’t seem to inspire much poetry for me.
Instead, stubbornly, I seem to write more about the more subterranean pursuits – comic books, television shows. I’ve even had a Manga shop appear in a poem! I can’t explain this except to say that popular culture does seem, to me, to reflect certain subconscious truths about contemporary society, and that fascinates me. I’m also fascinated by ancient mythologies and folk tales from other cultures; Jung’s ideas about the collective unconscious and archetypes have been helpful for me as a writer, as well. Typical “fun” reading for me is a book like The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan by Hayao Kawai. Then I’ll go watch a Miyazaki movie or “Death Note” or something. I think I read Terri Windling’s fairy-tale-themed collection The Armless Maiden right before watching “Jin Roh,” come to think of it.  The cross-fertilization of so-called “high culture” and “low culture” is a good thing for my writing.

Looking at the collection – it’s broken into five sections, each named according to its place in a narrative arc. And some of the poems, particularly the superhero and Persephone ones, feel linear when read together. Did you write them as narratives? Or did they come in pieces, and just sort of fit together?

I wrote some of the “linear” storylines – the Philomel poems, for instance – over ten years. I wasn’t thinking of a narrative when I started them. In fact, I didn’t realize I had written so many poems on the same theme until someone suggested I put a chapbook together, and I sent “Female Comic Book Superheroes” to Pudding House Press. Then I really started examining what I had been writing about, and it seemed there were a couple of main characters. That’s when the collection that became Becoming the Villainess started to come together. Actually, I tried to write the collection with a more positive spin – starting from Philomel and the villainess characters and moving towards the more positive female superheroes. That’s how I sent it out, and it had various titles. My husband was reading the book over my shoulder one night and said, “That’s not really the way you’ve written the arc.” He was the one who came up with the idea that the speakers were become corrupted, becoming the villainess, because of the forces at work against them. It’s definitely a darker concept than I had originally intended, but I think it fit the poems better. And then I had the idea to use comic book principles (Origins, Superpower, Character Arc, Final Frame) to organize the book. The first publisher I sent the book to after that was Steel Toe Books, and they decided they wanted to publish it.

When you hear/read Cinderella, what do you think of? Does the story have any particular meaning to you?

I think it has some resonance to me; my mother tells me it was the first book I learned to “read,” although I actually memorized it as a kid and pretended to “read” it out loud to her. My family structure may also have made the story more interesting to me; after all, my mother married my father, who was a widower with two young sons, and then had me and my little brother. So in a way I had some extra sympathy for the “wicked Stepmother” because of her.
When I was younger I hated the violent parts of the Grimm’s version – the doves pecking out eyes, the cutting off of various parts of the foot by the stepsisters trying to fit into the shoe. But now, I see those things as metaphors – the cutting off of the foot as a way women are willing to damage themselves to be attractive to men, for instance.
I have to admit to being partial to the singing mice in the Disney version of the story.

You have several Cinderella works, each quite different. “Little Cinder”, crackles with life, while “Cinderella at the Car Dealership” is harder to read, harder to sympathise with. How did you come to two so very different renderings of the same tale?

Well, in “Little Cinder,” I really wanted to create an alternate version of Cinderella, someone who wouldn’t be at odds with all the violence in the tale, who might, in fact, actually welcome it. She’s had a hard life and has become hard as a result of it. I wanted to create a girl that the stepmother should actually be afraid of.
“Cinderella at the Car Dealership” was written at the same time as “Red Riding Hood at the Car Dealer,” that I mentioned earlier. The idea was to transplant these tough, possibly dangerous female fairy tale characters into a modern situation and see what happened. Car dealers have got to be some of the most pushy, frustrating people I’ve ever encountered, so I set Red and Cinderella loose to see what they would do with them. I think it’s important to look at the aspects of power that can be unpleasant, that women might avoid because society tells them to. Why is a woman demonized when she becomes powerful? (See Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin.) If power corrupts men, it makes sense that it would corrupt women, too. And what would that look like? (See my poem “The Snow Queen Explains” for a portrayal of an absolutely corrupt, powerful woman.)
I think it’s a shame so many women in today’s society still end up victims – a leading cause of death of pregnant women is murder by the husband or boyfriend, and the domestic violence shelters I’ve been to weren’t exactly empty the last time I checked. There a glamorization of victimhood in movies and stories that I address in “Okay, Ophelia” and “The Dead Girl Speaks” that I am absolutely against. There’s no glamour in being the dead girl in the newspaper story, or the suicidal love-interest of the hero. But often popular culture doesn’t offer women alternative roles. Hooker with a heart of gold, dead girl, femme fatale. It’s a pretty boring set of roles, actually. I’m ready to see more alternatives.

Then, of course, there’s “Conversations with the Stepmother, at the Wedding”. Tell us a little about it.

One of the reasons I really like writing in persona is to get the opportunity to try and empathize with fictional characters who’ve been given really short shrift, historically. Trying to write from the point of view of someone doing terrible things does make me exercise my imagination and empathy muscles. Everybody’s down on the wicked stepmother, but if you look at the Snow White and Cinderella stories (not to mention Hansel and Gretel) you can see how the stepmother is put into a difficult situation from day 1 – a husband who still worships a deceased first wife, a la Rebecca, and little kids who might be hostile to your presence. They’re not given very sympathetic storylines, really, so I thought they deserved to have a voice.
And, as I said earlier, my mother (though not wicked) was a stepmother to my two older brothers. So that dynamic was always interesting to me.

Is writing – is poetry – a learned or an innate ability?

So much of good writing in any genre – poetry, journalism, or anything else – is practice and hard work. I believe that some people may be born with innate talent, but if that person doesn’t read, write, get passionate about their subject matter – well, their writing is going to suffer. A lot of people say writing can’t be taught. But a lot of writing is learning the tools – avoiding clichés, or writing coherent dialogue, or becoming familiar with the body of work on your subject that already exists.  In a way, writers write in a vacuum. No one can help them, make them write a poem or story, or tell them exactly what to do. But writers are also part of a greater community, not just of writers alive today, but writers from other times and places. They need to be part of that community.
Loving poetry is the first step to being a poet. I started memorizing poems when I was ten. If you write poetry but you don’t read it, it’s going to affect your work.

How much of your work is personal? Do you find the meaning you feel in your work is the same as the meaning others glean from it?

I think people would be surprised to find out which poems are personal, and come from my actual life, and which are totally imaginary. I do write mainly in the first and second person, but the speakers come from so many different stories and places. I keep it hard to pin down on purpose. Any part of my own life that appears in my poems, of course, is also partially fictionalized; the little brother who appears in “My Little Brother in Parts” is in some ways based on my actual little brother, and in other ways, not. Growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee means it shows up partly as a mythical place in my poems. I’m fascinated with the villainess characters. But I definitely identify more with monsters, with Melusines and magical creatures. But in order to get to a voice in a persona poem, you had to work to identify with them. So I’d say a little bit of me shows up in all the poems.
I did find it interesting in people’s comments about the book which poems they thought were directly from my life; they were usually wrong. Someone mentioned online that “Her Nerves” was a great poem about my personal life, but it’s actually in the voice of T.S. Eliot’s first wife (who I think has been wrongly cast as a victim and a villainess.) “Job Requirements: A Supervillain’s Advice” probably reveals more personal details about me than people would imagine.

Where do you write? Coffee shop or home? Pen or keyboard?

I’ve been writing on a computer since I was about six. TRS-80, then Apple, then IBM, Mac, then various PC laptops. I currently have a pink Sony Vaio. I have terrible handwriting, so notebooks just aren’t practical. I like to write at home, but also write in places I know I’ll have time on my hands – doctor’s offices, for instance.

What would you call your autobiography?

“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.”

Book you’d hide if someone just dropped ‘round?
It’s not a book, but I have a very frightening magazine addiction. Fashion, cooking, travel, writing, British versions of American magazines…well, it can become a little crazy. I do write freelance magazine articles once in a while, which is how I justify this addiction.

Read a book or watch the movie?
I’m not a big snob about it; surprisingly, sometimes watching the movie is a better experience. The first Harry Potter movie was much less annoying than the first Harry Potter book. And I never cared for Wuthering Heights very much until I saw that movie version with Ralph Fiennes. Twilight is terrible either way.

Last book you bought ? “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” A terrific French novel.

Ever read the last page of a book first? If it’s poetry, no. But in fiction? Almost every time.

These poems first appeared in Becoming the Villainess, published by Steel Toe Books.

Little Cinder

Girl, they can’t understand you.
You rise from the ash-heap in a blaze
and only then do they recognize you
as their one true love.

While you pray beneath your mother’s
tree you carve a phoenix into your palm
with a hazel twig and coal;
every night she devours more of you.

You used to believe in angels.
Now you believe in the makeover;
if you can’t get the grime off your face
and your foot into a size six heel

who will ever bother to notice you?
The kettle and the broom sear in your grasp,
snap into fragments. The turtledoves sing,
“There’s blood within the shoe.”

You deserve the palace, you think, as you signal
the pigeons to attack, approve the barrel filled
with red-hot nails. The great hearth beckons,
and the prince’s flag rises crimson as the angry sun.

He will love you for the heat you generate,
for the flames you ignite around you,
though he encase your tiny feet in glass
to keep them from scorching the ground.

Conversation with the Stepmother, at the Wedding

I did the best that I could
and she turned out okay, didn’t she?
It could have been a lot worse.
These shoes are killing me.

You don’t understand how hard it was,
those greasy children
with their lentils, their field mice,
always playing with fire,

their clinging fingers wrapped
around locks of their mother’s hair
or magic tree branches,
their grubby fists full of crumbs.

Hard to shake them loose
no matter how I comb their hair,
how many apples I feed them,
how many times I send them into the woods.

They never blame their father
who brought me here, to a house
full of strangers, where even the servants
worship images of the dead.

I say, make room for the new.

When Red Becomes the Wolf

In my dream you brought me fried bologna sandwiches.
“But wait,” you said, “You don’t even like bologna.”
I wolfed them down without answering.

I have never owned a red cape, that’s asking
for trouble, I knew. I dyed auburn hair brown.
In the forest by your house,

I met someone gathering wood. “Nice axe,”
I said before wandering further.
I was obtaining samples for my botany class.

How many daisies make a statistic?
I thought of Persephone, her dark gash
that allowed Hades passage. Which flower?

I was hungry, and tired. I entered someone’s
cottage, it was dark, and there was an old woman.
I volunteered to take her to get her hair done.

I mentioned I was born under the sign
of Lupus. “No,” she corrected, “Lupae. ”
Later, eating sandwiches, we discussed you

and also whether I could wear her fur coat.
”It makes you look feral, with your green eyes,”
she said. Oh grandmother, what a big mouth you have.

Becoming the Villainess

A girl – lovelocked, alone – wanders into a forest
where lions and wolves lie in wait.
The girl feeds them caramels from the pockets of her paper dress.
They follow like dogs.

Each day she weaves for twelve brothers, twelve golden shirts
twelve pairs of slippers, twelve sets of golden mail.
She sleeps under olive trees, praying for rescue.
In her dreams doves fly in circles, crying out her name.

For a hundred years she is turned into a golden bird,
hung in a cage in a witch’s castle. Her brothers
are all turned to stone. She cannot save them,
no matter how many witches she burns.

She weeps tears that cannot be heard
but turn to rubies when they hit the ground.
She lifted her hand against the light
and it became a feathered wing.

She learns the songs of mockingbirds, parakeets, pheasants.
She wanders into the forest more herself.
She speaks of her twelve stone brothers.
There is a dragon curled around eggs. There is a princess

who is also a white cat, and a tiny dog
she carries in a walnut shell.
She befriends a reindeer who speaks wisdom.
They are all in her corner. It seems unlikely now

that she will ever return home, remember what
it was like, her mother and father, the promises.
She will adopt a new costume,
set up shop in a witch’s castle,

perhaps lure young princes and princesses
to herself, to cure what ails her -
her loneliness, her grandeur,
the way her heart has become a stone.

Jeannine was awarded a 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for Poetry and a 2007 Washington State Artist Trust GAP grant. She has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and Mythic Delirium. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches at the MFA program at National University. You can learn more about her and her work at www.webbish6.com.