Every culture—or so it seems—has its own sleeping beauty, or rose among the briars. All around the world there are cinder girls and beanstalks and handsome princes disguised as beasts or toad frogs, and grandmothers with a wolf at the door, and heroes in search of a holy grail.

And the stories get told over and over again: first, by peasant families around their firesides or under the starlit sky; then in children’s nurseries by peasant women hired as nursemaids; then by governesses and school dames, then in scholarly editions collected by antiquarians or courtiers; then by librarians and sophisticated storytellers, then in translations, and abridgments and adaptations; then in children's editions with color illustrations by well-known artists; then by lyricists and composers in Broadway musicals or Hollywood extravaganzas; then by existentialists writing a modern novel from the point of view of the monster or the wicked stepsister; and finally by parodists, turning the story on end, for fun—and to see its underside.

I call these stories “classics and their cousins.” And there are many cousins: first cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed. You can almost tell that it’s a classic by the number of cousins it has. Anne Sexton called them “transformations,” using a term familiar to psychologists, anthropologists, and intertextual critics.

Sara Henderson Hay actually beat Sexton to the punch with her Story Hour (1963), a collection of poems based on familiar fairy tales. And what fun she must have had:

He swung the axe, the toppling beanstalk fell.
Hurrah, hurrah, for Jack, the self-reliant.
The townsfolk gathered round to wish him well.
Was no one sorry for the murdered giant?

That’s the title poem, “Story Hour.” Then there’s “The Builders":

I told them a thousand times if I told them once:
Stop fooling around, I said, with straw and sticks;
. . . . . . . . . .
Brick is the stuff to build with, solid bricks.

Or, “I Remember Mama”:

The trouble is, I never felt secure.
There we were, crammed into that wretched shoe. . . .

Or, “The Grandmother”:

You wouldn’t think they’d let me live alone
Away out here in the woods, so far from town . . . .

Or, “The Investigator”:

It’s unprovoked and wanton cruelty.
In the first place, the unfortunate mice were blind.

Or, “One of the Seven Has Something to Say”:

Remember how it was before she came—?
The picks and shovels dropped beside the door,
The sink piled high, the meals any old time,
Our jackets where we’d flung them on the floor?

What one may not notice on first reading, however, is that Sara Henderson Hay’s works are not mere verses. They are all—every one of them—full-fledged sonnets, with fourteen lines, an octave and sestet, with rhyme schemes like ABABCDCD EFGGFE (in the title poem). What is almost more fun than the satiric twists is seeing this elegant form used in such a playful way.

This collection has been reprinted several times, and a number of the individual poems have been selected for anthologies. Find it if you can. Just remember:

How requisite to every fairy tale
A round-eyed listener with no foolish questions. ( )