Fairies -- Marchette Gaylord Chute

A followup of sorts to the recent Dorothy Parker poem...

(Poem #640) Fairies You can't see fairies unless you're good. That's what Nurse said to me. They live in the smoke of the chimney, Or down in the roots of a tree; They brush their wings on a tulip, Or hide behind a pea. But you can't see fairies unless you're good, So they aren't much use to me. -- Marchette Gaylord Chute

Amidst the plethora of insipid, saccharine or just-plain-dull children's
poems, it was refreshing to come across one as unexpectedly and delightfully
subversive as 'Fairies'.

Of course, there are a lot of brilliant poems out there too, but too many
writers seem to take writing for children as a license to churn out the most
awful dreck. Sturgeon's law apart, I can't help but feel that some writers
take distinct advantage of the fact that their target audience and their
target *market* are entirely separate.

Today's piece is a clear dig at the preachy variety of poem - starting off
with a solemn moral injunction, throwing in a few cliches about fairies, and
then delivering the unrepentant punchline. Took me totally by surprise - I
laughed out loud.

Biography:

 B. 08-16-1909, Marchette Gaylord Chute - UK author. MC broke the retelling
 mode of historical writers and did actual source research. She is best
 known for With Shakespeare of London (1950) and Geoffrey Chaucer of England
 (1946).
    --  [broken link] http://www.undelete.org/woa/woa08-16.html

Links:

The Dorothy Parker poem referred to: poem #638

We've run several children's poems on Minstrels, but nothing particularly
reminiscent of today's.

-martin