Why Myths? Why Fairy Tales?

I often wonder about the turn my poetry manuscript has taken. Why is it that I chose to re-write myths and tales and old stories? For one thing, I have always loved them. Plain and simple. Fairy-tales, myths and historical re-writings/revisions are my obsessions. Okay. But then, so what? I am finding myself in a space where I can't really get rid of the "so what" question. So, this post is really my feeble attempt to think aloud through some of the things.

To begin with, I am a wee-bit uncomfortable with the "confessional" poetry. Especially the way it has operated within the feminist poetry writing practices. I understand their historical importance, the importance of inscribing the "I" within the archive. But at the same time, I am a little bit wary of it now. I think, the "I" in the confessional feminist poetry often becomes an exocitized "I." And even worse, it tends to reduce itself to an "I" which only celebrates itself, but fails to be self-critical. At least, for the most part. I have often gravitated towards the "she" in my more autobiographical poems. I have always felt the use of the "she" puts a distance between me, the personal human being and the poetic persona. It allows myself to see myself as a character, and thus analyze myself more, contextualize and historicize myself more. To what extent I have been successful only future and readers can tell.

The tales and lores and the myth also perform a similar function for me. They help me to de-familiarize my material by providing a relatively pre-determined plot-arc. Of course, in lots of my poems I have broken the familiar plot-arc of those stories. But even in order to break them, I had to operate within them. So, the fairytales, lores and myths, much like the metrical and line constraints of a sonnet, sestina or villanelle, puts certain constraints upon me. I find these constraints liberating. They allow me to re-interpret not only the myths and stories within whose bellies I am re-instating my own story-poems, but they also allow me to think anew the material from life that I am writing about.