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The story that most intrigued me in these readings was Ann Sexton's interpretation of Briar Rose. I found the way she used modern terms and objects -- such as cigarettes and saftey pins -- to be a very subtle way to bring the story of Briar Rose a time closer to the present day.

What I found to be most interesting about Ann Sexton's poem was the line, "each night the king/ bit the hem of her gown /to keep her safe" along with the explainations of Briar Rose's insomnia. I feel like there is something strange in the way her father is so over protective in the begining of the poem, so much to the extent of pining the moon so she will always be in the light...then, at the end after she has awakened from her sleep, she refuses to sleep in the presence of the prince, and has so many issues with sleep in general. After describing these fears and feelings of imprisonment, Ann Sexton, in the second to last stanza, speaks of theft, loss of control, and Briar Rose's father bent drunkenly over her bed in the night.

I feel like Ann Sexton puts so much between the lines of this poem, that I find it hard to sort out what truely the story she is trying to tell -- is it about a naive young girl whos father tries to protect her, yet still she falls alseep, only to be saved by a prince? or, Is it about a little girl who escaped into this story of a valiant prince to save her from her seemingly enternal darkness that she feels when her father visits her in the night?

"Thats another kind of prison

Its not the prince at all,

but my father

drunkenly bent over my bed,

circling the abyss like a shark,

my father thick upon me

like some sleeping jellyfish."