Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin

By Glyn Maxwell b. 1962 Glyn Maxwell
‘Your name is Rumpelstiltskin!’ cried
The Queen. ‘It’s not,’ he lied. ‘I lied
The time you heard me say it was.’
‘I never heard you. It’s a guess,’

She lied. He lied: ‘My name is Zed.’
She told the truth: ‘You’re turning red,
Zed.’ He said: ‘That’s not my name!’
‘You’re turning red though, all the same.’

‘Liar!’ he cried: ‘I’m turning blue.’
And this was absolutely true.
And then he tore himself in two,
As liars tend to have to do.

Glyn Maxwell, “Rumpelstiltskin” from The Boys at Twilight: Poems 1990-1995. Copyright © 2000 by Glyn Maxwell. Reprinted by permission of Glyn Maxwell.

Source: The Boys at Twilight: Poems 1990-1995 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000)

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Poet Glyn Maxwell b. 1962

POET’S REGION England

Subjects Living, Life Choices, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Language & Linguistics, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture

Poetic Terms Quatrain, Rhymed Stanza

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Glyn Maxwell

Biography

Born in England to Welsh parents, Glyn Maxwell was educated at Oxford University and Boston University, where he studied both poetry and theater with Derek Walcott. This simultaneous training in two disciplines has enabled him to create innovative work across genres. Maxwell has written numerous verse plays as well as long narrative poems. The Sugar Mile (2005), a verse narrative set in a Manhattan bar a few days before . . .

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SUBJECT Living, Life Choices, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Language & Linguistics, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture

POET’S REGION England

Poetic Terms Quatrain, Rhymed Stanza

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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