Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell

By Stephanie Parent

Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell is a collection that uses fairytale themed poetry to express the modern day struggle of women and their fight against oppression. The retellings lose none of the magic of the original stories, but open up the reader's eyes to the darkness that has been lurking behind women all along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Querencia Press, LLC
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869341730

Stephanie Parent

Stephanie Parent is a lifetime lover of fairy tales of all sorts, but she especially appreciates the stories where clever girls defeat monsters, with or without a fairy godmother's help. An author of poetry and prose, Stephanie is still writing her own happily-ever-after. Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell is her first poetry collection.

Book preview

Every Poem a Potion,

Every Song a Spell

STEPHANIE PARENT

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Querencia Press, LLC

Chicago Illinois

QUERENCIA PRESS

© Copyright 2022

Stephanie Parent

All Rights Reserved

No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the author.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ISBN 979 8 9860788 5 4

.

www.querenciapress.com

First Published in 2022

Querencia Press, LLC

Chicago IL

Printed & Bound in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Foreword

When Everything Else Was Gone

Into the Forest

Part One: Strange Creatures

Crack Nuts

Stepsisters

Red Hood in the Woods

Clawed Creatures

Little Cages

Poissonnier

Part Two: Little Houses

Twice Fooled

Little Bones

Marlene

Gretel

No Dumb Bunny

The House on Chicken Legs

Boy, Lost

Snegurochka

Part Three: Wild Gardens

Rampion

The Hanging Garden

Amphibious Love

Silver and Stone

Walnut Heart

Dream Garden

Thorns and Wings

Part Four: Enchanted Castles

Curse of the Firstborn

Skin and Salt

Eternity

Blessed Curse

Too Late or Never

Invisible Bars

Epilogue: Disenchanted

Uncaged

The Question

The Answer

Notes on Previous Publications

Foreword

I began writing this poetry collection while I was working on a long nonfiction project, a personal story that drew symbolism from fairy tales in their oldest, darkest forms. As a child I had read older versions of fairy tales in Andrew Lang’s Colored Fairy Books, in picture books with illustrations by Kay Nielsen and Arthur Rackham, and in a treasured volume titled Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales, edited by Alison Lurie. I also watched the Disney princess movies more times than I could count, knew the princesses’ ballads and love songs by heart, and carried glass figurines of Ariel and Aurora with me to school and displayed them on my bedroom shelves.

I adored the original fairy tales with their shades of blood and shadow, their echoes of violence and loss, lingering among the happy endings. I loved the modern versions with their Technicolor heroines, their stories of sacrifice rewarded and true love conquering all. In my child’s mind, the two types of tales melded, till I believed no happily-ever-after was possible without the undercurrent of human cruelty and a cold, uncaring world. What were fairy godmothers and witches, after all, but two sides of the same coin? Couldn’t magic lose its power if we found it without first plunging to the depths of adversity?

While working on my nonfiction project, I was disappointed to realize how many modern readers knew only of the Disney fairy tales. They weren’t familiar with the original Little Mermaid, where with every step the mergirl took on dry land, invisible knives impaled her feet, or the version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves where the evil queen danced to her death in red-hot shoes. They had never read the tales of clever girls who made their own fate, like Kate Crackernuts, or the haunting