Wicked Thoughts: Fairy-tale Poetry for Children and Adults

This chapter investigates and contrasts contemporary fairy-tale poetry addressed to an adult audience with poetry addressed to a child audience. The essay shows that the authors for children who have tried their hand at this genre use linguistic devices and “narrative” strategies that are remarkably similar to those employed by poets for adults. Authors as diverse as Dahl and Sexton, for example, use a distinctly contemporary tone and diction, and share a deliberate satiric display of anachronisms and modern parallels for characters and situations of the fairy tale.