The Blog

Anna Maria Hong's H & G

David Greenberg

Our culture’s obsession with fairy tales and superheroes is both a premodern revival of myth and a form of compulsiveness. It doesn’t matter that Spiderman has been played by multiple actors or that Disney creates microvariants of identical coming-of-age stories. Myths are meant to be retold, and the more retelling, the greater their power. Nor does it matter when the work winks at the audience with an awareness of artifice and convention. (See Guardians of the Galaxy, or Robert Coover’s debauched fairy tales.) Skepticism is a crucial component of the genre, as fairy tales are not just about first enthrallment, but the full cycle of spell, disillusionment, and reenchantment. The fact that a spell is always ready to wear off defines its power—its precariousness stakes its claim.

Visiting Hours

Daniel Khalastchi

for H. N.

 

To be inside the lush

       of life I climb alive a tree

 

           outside the guarded rise

                  of hospital where you receive

 

your treatment. Attached against

       my back I have a crate of caf-

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