What You Wish For - by Ruth Bardon (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In What You Wish For, Ruth Bardon uses a feminist lens to take a fresh look at wishes, witches, magic spells, princesses, sleeping beauties, and 21st century queen bees. Her poems are sympathetic both to hopeful, yearning heroines and to equally hopeful, yearning villains and minor characters. At the same time, they are darkly pessimistic about the possibility of happy endings. With subtlety and humor, these quiet poems radically deconstruct familiar stories.

Review Quotes

Ruth Bardon's book What You Wish For is a collection of persona poems that weaves fresh insights into fairy tales with the tools of a skilled poet, the gifts of a creative mind, and a sense of humor that sometimes has a sharp edge. Reading these poems is like sitting at the kitchen table talking with a dear friend. I'll come back often and sit for a spell in their good company.

-Malaika King Albrecht, author of four books of poetry and founding editor of Redheaded Stepchild

In this collection, Ruth Bardon has deconstructed many of the stories and images of our collective imagination-princess, queen, witch-often represented in our culture through a misogynistic lens and the broad strokes of a blinding, light-seeking "positivity." Full of reversals that draw from an archetypal feminism, her intricately wrought reconstructions give voice and credibility to the darkness inherent in being human. With humility, minute observation, and the empathy to inhabit even those perceived as villains, Bardon achieves a grounded realism braided with the sublime, a sublime as hard-earned and trustworthy as the dirt beneath our feet.

-Mermer Blakeslee, author of When You Live by a River