Introduction & Overview of Bedtime Story by George MacBeth

Bedtime Story Introduction

"Bedtime Story" appears in the third section of George MacBeth's Collected Poems: 1958-1970. It consists of thirteen free-verse quatrains told from a narrator whose point of view is inconsistent. In the Foreword to this collection MacBeth writes that the poems in this section are "written for those who (like myself) regard themselves as children." While that may be so, MacBeth is no ordinary child. Poems such as "House for a Child," and "A Child's Garden" are grouped with poems such as "When I Am Dead" and "Fourteen Ways of Touching the Peter." Regarding oneself as a child, for MacBeth, means engaging in poetic mischief. "Bedtime Story" is a parody of bedtime stories, in that it uses the form of such a story to poke fun at the idea of happy endings and to undercut the notion that human beings are essentially good, or have generally benign intentions towards one another....
(read more)