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Contributors to The Violet Issue include Kim Addonizio, Don Mee Choi, Lucy Corin, Tracy Daugherty, Espido Freire, Toshiya Kamei, Sarah Hannah, Lily Hoang, Anna Maria Hong, Kim Hyesoon, Jeffrey Levine, Lisa Olstein, David Petruzelli, Natania Rosenfeld, Aurelie Sheehan, Richard Siken, Kieran Suckling, Lee Upton, and Julie Marie Wade.

Dear Readers,

“At an early age, children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind to enjoy fairy tales,” Andre Breton wrote in 1924. “There are fairy tales to be written for adults,” he continued. “Fairy tales almost blue.” Violet flowers are often described as “almost-blue,” which is how I chose this color; or almost how.

For a long time I was foolishly excited about writing this Editor’s Note, full of happiness about The Violet Issue, the third issue of Fairy Tale Review, with its diverse contents and new voices and magical language. Three, such a transformative number, too, in so many tales. This issue, as with three previous two, has come as a surprise, as a gift.

But then one of my oldest friends, one of our finest poets, and one of the most ardent supporters of Fairy Tale Review, left us forever. Sarah Hannah took her own life in May, a week before her 41st birthday. This issue is dedicated to her.

Sarah was the first person to know that this issue would be violet. She and I had a long conversation about it last November. I thought the issue would be pink, I told her. Pink is the color that she and I shared a mutual obsession with, and our friendship of the past 26 years revolved very much around pink. The pink flowers we planted, the sequined pink curtains we both had on our windows (first on hers in Cambridge, then sent to mine in Tuscaloosa), the mini pink skirts we wore to Go-Go’s concerts, the pink candles we burned. We wrote letters on pink paper and often printed our first drafts on pink paper too. But Sarah said not to do this issue as The Pink Issue. “Save pink for last, for when we are old,” she said with that tone of glee—a wicked glee, an excitement only she could conjure for the smallest detail, making everything wild and secret and real.

So I decided upon violet while reading Breton, and wrote to tell her. “Perfect!” Sarah wrote back, and attached to the note the poems that appear here. She added that she used violet in one of the poems intending for readers to see it mistakenly as violent instead. And so we do.

It is fitting that Sarah’s poem contains the one of the rare instances of the word violet in contributions to The Violet Issue. She was a rare flower. And, as with the Andrew Lang series, the colors do not correspond exactly to the contents—I edit along the precise path of a dream without trying to wake it. But now I want to wake up, of course, from the nightmare. For while there is not much violet in here, there is a lot of violence in here, as in the tales, as in the world. Sarah’s departure could be described in her own words as “unthinking, true.” Violet, violent, violet sky in the evening, of dreams.

A fairy tale almost blue . . .

I will now always be blue, but this issue is beautifully violet.

Thank you for reading. And to all contributors, thank you for your beautiful and very fine work, for your beings.

—Kate Bernheimer
Founder & Editor

“Please, what’s that?” asked the princess.

“A spindle, my dear,” said the old woman, who hadn’t heard of the fairy’s curse.
“May I see?” the princess asked. As she reached out, she cut her finger on the spindle. She fell, unconscious, to the floor.
“Help!” called the old woman. All the king’s servants came running. They tried frantically to revive the princess. They put cold linen to her head, ammonia to her nose, rose water on her wrists and brow. Nothing helped.
When the king saw her, he knew the curse had come true. He gave order to the maids-in-waiting. Soon the Sleeping Beauty lay in her best dress, in a room all tapestried with gold and silver. The magic sleep increased her beauty. Her cheeks and lips were rosy. The soft sound of her breathing showed she wasn’t dead, but sleeping.
—From “Sleeping Beauty”
Translated by Marie Ponsot

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 12:03 am under Fairy Tale Review, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Folktales, Kate Bernheimer, Magazine. Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed or via the notify by email option below. Please leave a comment below or trackback from your own site.