The Wolf’s Postcript to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by Agha Shahid Ali
I love reading perspectives like this one. As a child, I never considered the Big Bad Wolf as anything but just that. As an adult, I’m far more aware that there’s rarely only one side to a story.
The Wolf’s Postcript to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’
By Agha Shahid Ali
First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn’t wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn’t speak to strangers.
And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn’t I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn’t know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?
And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you’ll agree she was pretty.
And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.
Let me say I really admire you for taking the time every day to find a new poem. I found this blog about a week ago, and I appreciate the work you put in to it because it helps me keep my toes wet even when I don’t have enough time to dive into poetry.
About this poem, I have trouble deciding why I think the author chose the style he did for this poem. It’s a bit of an interesting thought, and fresh enough even for the overworked genre of fairytale remixes. Still, the overall narration is fairly prosaic. I understand the desire some people have to “push the limits” of what you can expect from a poem by removing a lot of conventions of rhyme and/or meter, but sometimes that leaves me feeling like a poem has a lot of unused potential. Why did the author choose to write this poem in a style that seems like an ordinary paragraph with unusual line breaks? Was there a greater purpose that I fail to see, or did the author just not put a lot of thought into the exact style? After several readings I can’t force myself into concluding anything but the latter, which really disappoints me about this poem. If anybody knows more about this author and would like to enlighten me, then by all means, please do so.
Steve,
Thanks for the encouragement. I don’t feel I’ve had much time to dive into poetry lately, but I tend to go in spurts. The blog was on hiatus for quite a while (too long), and I’m glad that I’ve been pretty faithful about keeping it up lately, even if my file of poems is nearly empty.
I see your point about the poet’s writing style. Unless I read a poem aloud (which is rarely unless I have an audience), I tend to pay far less attention to form than content. I realize that this robs me of a lot with some poems, but I don’t generally spend a lot of time with a poem unless something really draws me in. It’s rather superficial of me, but I go for the stuff that really grabs me on the first reading. For a poem to be “worthy” of the blog (and I’m saying that with my tongue firmly in my cheek), at least one line has to jump out at me, or the overall feeling of the poem has to hold my attention. Even then, I don’t always spend time really getting inside the poem, usually because I’m tired at the end of the day and want to go to bed. Sometimes I go back and read previous posts again, though. I love that I find new treasures that way that I missed the first time around.
That was rather rambling and didn’t really address your comment. I confess I don’t know much about this author. I believe the only other poem of his that I’ve posted is The Dacca Gauzes, which I think I read in The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. I don’t remember anything about the author’s bio. How unhelpful!
Thanks for creating this site! I discovered it last month when I searched for ideas to share with my after-school creative writing class for middle and high school students. We have read and discussed a couple of the poems you posted.
My pleasure! I’m so glad you’ve found it useful.