{"id":974,"date":"2007-11-02T00:48:13","date_gmt":"2007-11-02T06:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=974"},"modified":"2007-11-02T16:00:54","modified_gmt":"2007-11-02T22:00:54","slug":"poetry-friday-something-about-alice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=974","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Something about Alice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Through<\/p>\n

{Note: Please see the post below this one for today’s Robert’s Snow schedule (and a Poetry Friday snowflake if we ever saw one)}<\/font><\/em><\/center>When Jules and I were gestating this little blog idea, we tossed around a few ideas for titles and designs, but we kept coming back to Alice. She’s the perfect symbol for what we’re trying to do here, because we’re adults, reading children’s and adult books; and Lewis Carroll’s books can be enjoyed on different levels by children and adults. Also, Alice is one of those characters that Jules and I (and I know we’re not alone) fell in love with as children, really identified with her – her curiosity, her frustration with pointless rules, her ability to see the pointlessness of a lot of adult behavior – in a way that stayed with us as adults.<\/p>\n

And when my husband and I watched Mirrormask<\/a><\/strong><\/em> the other night, we started talking about something I’m going to call The Alice Motif: that pattern that repeats itself over and over in children’s books, where a girl is transported to another reality, and has to figure out how things work there, forge alliances, and complete some kind of quest before she’s allowed to go back home. I’m pretty sure it began with Alice, and then continues with Dorothy<\/a><\/strong>, Meg<\/a><\/strong>, Coraline<\/a><\/strong>… etc. The male version is different: a boy is transported to another reality and takes on a quest, but usually it’s linked to discovering the secret of his own identity, in a version of the Arthurian\/Joseph Campbell\/Heroic Epic motif: Frodo<\/a><\/strong>, Taran<\/a><\/strong>, Will<\/strong><\/a>, Harry<\/a><\/strong>… and so on. The Narnia Chronicles<\/a><\/strong> are a notable hybrid, in that they combine male and female protagonists; and also because of the way they merge the concept of the identity quest with the protagonists being able to go back and forth between the realities. The only “classic” children’s book I’ve been able to think of with a male protagonist following the Alice motif is James and the Giant Peach<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. Anyone else have a suggestion?<\/p>\n

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, Alice is THE icon of children’s literature for a lot of us, and means a lot to me (and Jules) personally for being a gateway drug into literature in general. We pay homage to that with the title and header image here at 7-Imp. So when I saw this<\/strong><\/a> posted as a featured poem on the Poetry Foundation’s website, I knew I had my Poetry Friday pick.<\/p>\n

“And as in Alice”<\/strong><\/a>
\nby Mary Jo Bang<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Alice cannot be in the poem, she says, because
\nShe’s only a metaphor for childhood
\nAnd a poem is a metaphor already
\nSo we’d only have a metaphor<\/p>\n

Inside a metaphor. Do you see?
\nThey all nod. They see. Except for the girl
\nWith her head in the rabbit hole.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click here<\/strong><\/a> to read the rest.<\/p>\n

*Edited to add: The Poetry Friday Roundup for this week is at <\/em>Mentor Texts, Read Alouds and More<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>and it is fabulous. Check it out.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Note: Please see the post below this one for today’s Robert’s Snow schedule (and a Poetry Friday snowflake if we ever saw one)}When Jules and I were gestating this little blog idea, we tossed around a few ideas for titles and designs, but we kept coming back to Alice. She’s the perfect symbol for what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}