Fairy Poems

by Lynne Greenberg (Editor)

A wide-ranging and appealingly fairy-sized treasury of fantastical poems from across the centuries and around the world, in a gorgeously jacketed small hardcover

Fascination with fairies spans centuries and cultures. With ancient roots in pagan belief, fairies have long populated mythology, folklore, and oral and written poetry. They have seen repeated surges of renewed popularity from the Renaissance to the present fantasy-besotted moment.

Elves, changelings, mermaids, pixies, and sprites, England’s Queen Mab, France’s Morgana, Scandinavian nixies, and Irish banshees: these magical creatures are sometimes mischievous, sometimes dangerous, but always enchanting. This collection brings together a diverse array of literary fairies: here are Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare‘s Titania, and Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” but also Arthur Rimbaud’s “Fairy,” Goethe's "Erlking," Claude McKay’s “Snow Fairy,” Denise Levertov’s “Elves,” Sylvia Plath’s “Lorelei," Christopher Okigbo's "Watermaid," and Neil Gaiman's "The Fairy Reel.” 

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fantasy, Anthologies

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 16, 2023

Reviews

[Loretta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t know that a poetry book about Fairies, such as Tinker Bell, would be so entertaining and enjoyable! Another Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets that I’ll need to buy for my collection! 😊

[Caitlin Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated the categorization of poems into specific fairy topics. As a person who has enjoyed reading fantasy novels about Fae, it was interesting to see more about actual lore and imagery of these creatures. While it did take me a while to get through this collection, that was more due to the quantity of poems and the old school writing style. It lends itself to slower reading for more analysis. Even with that, I did really enjoy this book!

[Sabrina Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

You always take a risk getting a collection of poems from different poets. However, I really loved the majority of the poems they chose to highlight. I even found a few new poets I would like to read more of.

[Lilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brought whimsy and joy into my life that I didn’t even know I needed

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.4**/5**
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I really enjoyed reading this, and pretty much all of my qualms had to do with curation choices that are my own preferences, not the poems themselves. The book is a perfect size--a robust collection of poems, but compact enough to take places. I always read poetry out loud, because the sound is such an important element; I spent many mornings and afternoons outside with my cat, reading these poems to her, which she clearly loved. I wonder if she sees reading poetry as the equivalent of a human purring; she would sit by me or on me and purr, at times when she would normally be exploring or playing. Anyway, the size is perfectly portable, and the poem choices as a whole are beautifully lyrical in a typical 1700-1900s way; I'll definitely be taking this hiking to read my favorites while I'm out in nature.
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The wide collection has also given me a great jumping off point to look further into some of my favorite poets from the book. I do understand that that's one of the points of this little collection; to serve as an entry point into poetry, using largely classic victorian fairy poems as well as themes that are a bit more modernly applicable. A lot of my issues with the curation are because of this; the gimmicky and slapped together nature of some of the sections (Absinthe, I'm looking at you), the many translated poems (translating a poem seems like sacrilege to me; I would rather listen to a poem in the language it was originally written in to preserve the sound, even if I don't understand what it's about), and including short excerpts from longer poems (erasing context, sometimes feeling like they're included just because it's a section that mentions fairies; some of the longer poems, like "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, aren't even that long and would have been fine to include) were poor choices that show distrust in the reader. All the entries are short or cut down, or shoved into boxes that people tend to be more interested in or know a little about, or are from widely known plays and poems. It feels as if the priority was short attention spans and gimmicky surface level interest, instead of a true appreciation and showcasing of the poems themselves. Like I said before, I do know that the book's main purpose is of course to be an entry point into this kind of poetry, and there is a lot of information that would make it easy to find more work or entire poems by the poets included, so I'm not all that mad at it. The book did even have the intended effect on me; I was very into poetry in high school and college, and have largely fallen out of writing and reading it; this book reminded me how much I love it, and I feel encouraged to read and write more poetry again.
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Also, just a little note for myself, this book was a gift from a dear friend of mine. It was perfectly chosen for me, given book corners, and filled with dried flowers and leaves. It really made the book feel special, and I know this is one of the books I own that I'll be revisiting throughout my life.

[Jinke Koning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Belief

‘We do not know
If there be fairies now
Or no.
But why should we ourselves involve
In questions which we cannot solve.
O let’s pretend it’s so
And then perhaps if we are good
Some day we’ll see them in the wood.’

W.H. Auden

[- ̗̀ shiro ̖́- · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think poetry helps calm the mind no matter what shape and format it is and as someone who is a very big aesthetic person and this heavily involved in the cottage core and the goblin core themes I really found this poetry book calming and mind soothing

[Mia Ojeda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve just returned to the mortal realm after completing my poetic journey into Faeryland. If ye have not crossed the thicketed threshold into the elderberry bogs, heard the entrancing voice of a faerie rose, or awoken with an otherworldly longing—you must! What can I say of my wanderings these past three months? I was enchanted by this beautiful collection of poems—some were witty, others haunting. I was particularly fond of the sonnets and ballads throughout the collection. I was fascinated by the recurrence of bewitched humans losing themselves in the glamour of meeting a fairy. I was familiar with quite a few poets—Spenser, Rosetti, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley etc. There were also excerpts from longer works such as The Lay of Oisin in The Land of Youth by Michael Coimín, Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson, and The Romance of the Forest by Anne Radcliffe. I’d definitely like to read these in the future. I was surprised to read quite a few translated poems as well. I’d be curious to know the grammatical work that went into mirroring the intended lyrical effect. I highly recommend reading this if you enjoy fairy and folklore! I’ve always wanted to read one of these Everyman’s Poetry books and I like that this was themed so I got a taste of poets I’d never heard of. I’ll definitely be picking up another very soon. Just to give you a glimpse into the collection, here are a few of my favorite poems:
Hy-Brasail—The Isle of The Blest by Gerald Griffin
The Berry Hollow of Lag Na Sméar by Cathal Ó Searcaigh
The Corn Stalk Fiddle by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Erklönig (The Erl-King) by Johann Wolfgana von Goethe
Tristam and Iseult by Matthew Arnold
The Haunted Spring by Samuel Lover
The Song of Wandering Aengus by W.B. Yeats
From the Somme by Leslie Coulson
Spoils of the Dead by Robert Frost
A Little Budding Rose by Emily Brontë

[fulviadd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely collection of poems loosely or directly related to all things fairies. A lot of the poems were a bit too old for my taste, but there were many I really loved. Reading this collection felt like a walk in an enchanted forest.

"We do not know
If there be fairies now
Or no.
But why should we ourselves involve
In questions which we cannot solve.
O let's pretend it's so
And then perhaps if we are good
Some day we'll see them in the wood."

~W.H. Auden

[Kyrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of poems about fairies divided into sections. You can read about fae seen when one drinks absinthe, you can read about the places fae live, read about mermaids, read about seductive fae, fae who've stolen children, where the fae have gone. It was fun to read one or two poems a day and imagine. More than that would be like eating too much of a good thing.

[John Majerle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed reading this anthology of poems selected from numerous poets across three centuries. It was interesting to see how beliefs and attitudes about the fae have changed over time and how these changes reflected the cultural and psychological shift in the western mind during that time.

[Lilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

My fav poem anthology to date! Loved reading about the folklore that my fav modern fantasy books are based on

[Anna F · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5

[Carlotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Xanthe · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Margueritte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any poem that has faeries listed, and any kind of faery. Absinthe. Homosexuals. Woodland creatures.

[Abbie Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poems were well worth it but some were completely unnecessary. Grateful to have found some poets that I’d like to read more of their works.

[Ida · Rating 4 out of 5]

<3

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection. Worth every penny