Jessy Randall. There Was an Old Woman. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 2015. Small format (approx. 5 x 4 inches), 66 pages. Softcover ISBN 978-0-87775-941-6, $12; hardcover 978-0-87775-942-3, $20. Signed, limited edition of 26 copies, $35. Order online from Unicorn Press or Small Press Distribution.
In this rollicking collection of prose poems, Jessy Randall brings new life to the women of Mother Goose’s fairy tales. With enthralling wit, There Was an Old Woman delights in unexpected portrayals of Mother Goose’s classic protagonists: old women from a variety of towns across the English landscape who live in shoes, who sell cows and sometimes their children. Randall’s new fairy tales inhabit a world simultaneously old and modern, inviting us to consider the parallels between the lives of Mother Goose’s women and the lives of women today.
"Good, awful fun" -- Aaron Cohick
"Quirky and funny ... (with) no shortage of feminism" -- Panorama of the Mountains
Sample poems in Cease, Cows, Hermeneutic Chaos, matchbook, Menacing Hedge, Really System, and Unbroken.
Readings in Colorado Springs, Greensboro, and elsewhere.
Available in some libraries. If it isn't at yours, you can probably request it.