Comment on Surrealism

"Fable," like many poems set in a surrealist mode, is difficult to make sense of at first, since nothing is said literally. The poem moves through a series of images that displace the reader into an altered state of understanding and consciousness. The recipient of these surreal images is forced to make connections between pictures and ideas that he or she would not ordinarily make. Yet at the same time the subject matter of the poem, a fable or myth, leads the reader to expect the supernatural and marvelous in the poem. The effect, then, is of being transported to a fantastic but not unsettling world. But at the end of the poem disharmony enters this blissful state, and the reader is made to experience a sense of dislocation.