1. Hans Christian Anderson was an “ugly” boy – tall with a big nose and big feet. He grew up to have a beautiful singing voice.
2. It’s speculated that Anderson was the illegitimate son of King Christian VIII of Denmark and discovered this shortly before writing The Ugly Duckling.
3. In the Disney version, the young bird’s struggles last a few minutes, not a few months.
4. The creatures who abused the cygnet don’t come to see his beauty. Rather, he widens his social circle and finds others like himself.
5. Some middle and high school students lack access to a wider social circle.
6. For bullied teens, the seven years of middle school and high school can feel like an eternity.
7. Though seen as a happy story because of its ending, The Ugly Duckling reinforces, rather than presents solutions to, the problem of tribalism.
8. In philosophical logic, the Ugly Duckling theorem argues that classification is impossible without bias and that a duckling is as similar to a swan as two swans are to each other.
9. Is a pimply, coarse-featured girl as similar to a prom queen as two prom queens are to each other?
10. What about a fat kid? A trans kid? A refugee?
11. The cygnet’s suicide attempt is forgotten once he joins the swans.
12. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Americans aged 15-24.
13. The leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States is firearms. In this way, American youth resemble the wild geese the cygnet found refuge with, who were then shot.
Alison Stone is the author of nine full-length collections, Informed (NYQ Books, 2024), To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023), Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, a book of collaborative poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize, New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award, and The Lyric’s Lyric Poetry Prize. She was Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. https://alisonstone.info/ Youtube and TikTok – Alison Stone Poetry.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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