[R. Nemo Hill]

I think Kate has put her finger on the heart of this one: it is a bedtime story and not a fairytale. The two narrative forms do overlap, and so the poem will attract the attention of those interested in both or either. However, those whose fascination tends more toward fairytale will probably be the poem's most vocal detractors due to the darkness that has been omitted entirely from the picture. For this very reason I think the title is necessary. For someone can very well set out to write a Bedtime Story even though they know quite well how to write a Fairytale, and thus the present title broadcasts this intention quite clearly. The argument could be made that a lullaby must needs be simple. Yet as a poem, this could certainly be made more satisfyingly complex if some hint of that darkness which is being kept at bay were to be implied somewhere in the sonnet (whose turn seems made-to-order for such a shadow), some trace of those childhood fears whose urgency might more fully justify the poem's choice of strategy, it's Field of Light. This suggested, of course, by one with (even as a child) a predilection for the Dark Forest of Fairytale.

All those alliterative s's and h's are quite impressive in context.

Nemo