NaPoWriMo 2021 draws to a close and like the year I did poems about my girlfriends I thought this year would be a slam dunk and it was quite an intense experience instead. I mean for one thing I was just going to edit an existing stack of poems. I didn't anticipate as many new poems being required. But some of the old ones were too decrepit (or obscure) to refurbish. Secondly, not a small quantity of poems ended up going to a dark place. I'm just happy I guess that there were as many upbeat ones as there ended up being.
Mid-month I was concerned enough about not having as many poems as I needed that I re-read The Poet's Grimm, 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales, edited by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson. 
I didn't find many ideas there but there were some really great poems so it's worth a read if you like these revisionist tales.
Some notable ones:
- I didn't realize this when I did the sentence experiment in "To The Prince of Thes’aurus," but Kathleen Jesme did the same thing earlier with "Afraid to Look Afraid to Look Away" where the middle line refers to the line above and below. Her poem is about "Hansel and Gretel."
- Donald Finkel's "The Sleeping Kingdgom" is about the heroes irresistible urge to kiss the sleeping princes.
- "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman actually did inspire my rewrite "Game of Trolls." His poem is about fairy tales quests in general.
- Marie Howe has a great poem about her brother in "Gretel, from a sudden clearing." It was interesting how many boy/girl sibling-hoods could be explored from that story.
- Anne Stanford's "The Bear" was a great one about spells and transformations.
- The excerpts of Hayden Carruth's long poem "Sleeping Beauty" made me want to look up the full original.
- Bruce Bennett's "The Skeptical Prince" was great, end stop.
- Anna Denise's "How to Change a Frog Into a Prince" about male adolescence was very sweet.
- Enid Dame's "Cinderella" about the cynical versus optimistic advise of mothers to their daughters about men.
- Mike Carlin's "Anaconda Mining Makes the Seven Dwarfs and Offer" and Rachel Loden's "HM Customs & Excise" were both funny and chilling.
- Alice Wirth Gray's "On a Nineteenth Century Color Lithograph of Red Riding Hood by Artist J.H." was a very good poem about the official police investigation after the Red Riding Hood saga.
- And Katharyn Howd Machan's "Hazel Tells LaVerne" is a hilarious send up of the frog prince.
Anyway, here is my final list:
- The Cerebral Wiles of Scheherazade
- The Tower
- Dragon Claw
- The Prince of Peas
- Good Grief by Lucy Van Pelt
- Scheherazade on the Landing
- Georgie
- Whitney Houston Is a Fairy Tale
- The Irresponsible Wagers of Lovesick Mermaids
- The Shepherdess and Her Life Coach
- Scheherazade, a Portrait
- To The Prince of Thes’aurus
- The Game of Trolls
- The Gift
- How to Serenade a Sea Maiden in 10 Steps
- Scheherazade Tells a Secret
- The Princess of Pontrhydyfen
- A Ring of Keys
- Transformations
- The Neoprene Knight
- Scheherazade in Foxholes
- The Blue Light
- Thief of Hearts
- How the Elephant Got to Malibu
- Steadfast
- Into the Forest of Flying Monkeys
- Cloudherding
- Grimm’s Primer on Forever After
- The Diamond
- The Sovereigns Abdicate
