Thursday, April 28, 2011

Return to Magic by Clive Sansom




Return to Magic by Clive Sansom is an old, long out-of-print collection of fairy tale poems first published in 1969. I acquired a copy years ago but the book is hard to find and expensive, even more now, perhaps in part because it's been listed on SurLaLune for years--I believe all the scans of the cover on the internet are my original one. (That yellowing on the bottom of the image is foxing on my particular copy that I never color corrected.) The poems are charming but usually not very profound. One of my favorites is his interpretation of Bluebeard, "The Forbidden Room," which I have scanned and am sharing with you today.

This is copyrighted and shouldn't be copied and pasted. I'm providing an image instead of copiable text to discourage such. It's here as a promotion of a forgotten book and poet who deserves to be remembered for doing something those of us here love, sharing fairy tales.

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful, thank you for sharing this.
    -Aaron

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  2. I was wondering about this (Bluebeard) yesterday.

    How come Bluebeard's wife didn't realize he was a killer beforehand?

    True, he hid his victims in a closet, but dead rotting bodies don't exactly smell like roses. Had this made the wife curious? Did she ever wonder where that awful smell was coming from, before Bluebeard even told her about the room?

    Just wondering (pun intended).

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