When was the last time you were alone in the natural and florid wilderness?

In solitude, did you ever behold something divine or perchance dance and drink deep in lonely bacchanals among that which must have been sublimely preternatural?

Have you ever sensed (or fantasized) purple phantasma, quickened by all the most beautiful stories that you had ever read, fantasms pirouetting in your brain, breathing life into the world of which you did behold alone?

Do you believe that isolation holds its own reward or singular incantation?

Works of Fantasy, when done well and right, allow us to imagine places we feel we must go, even if they are ghastly, and they give us the ability to enchant our own world, to imagine this existence as something better (whatever “better” means to you). Some call this escapism; mayhap it be augmentation.

The illusory as superior to verity.

Edgar Allan Poe’s fantasque piece of fiction “The Island of the Fay” illustrates profoundly the importance, the puissance, and the enthralling effect of the Fantasy genre (that is to say at least, of an absolute and cunning usage of honest elements of Fantasy) in literature, which in this day and vile age is a genre that has been grossly misrepresented, mishandled, and victimized by the loathsome banality of modernism and corporate agents of priggish censorship; we should count ourselves amongst the fortunate to behold DMR Books producing deserving products that act against that mediocrity!

“The Island of the Fay” is a cogent specimen of a piece of Fantasy working the deepest charms of its genre, and we are shown a supernatural—or psychological?—creature amidst a fascinating, dreamy, gloomy realm of faeries and nature and death, on which I believe readers could ponder: do we accept the fairyland we are lulled into or are we to explore the conception from other, more cerebral, angles?

But does it matter? What we are shown is wonderful and poignant and haunting—it is the voyage, the dance, the sacred vision! It is beautiful for its own sake. Readers may decide what it meant, if we so desire.

It is a story, which, at least in the eye of my vino-drunk mind, tells us how to find magnificence and pleasure in the process of writing, of thinking about writing, and of being solo with our thoughts and dreams and romantic, flowery fascinations within a purer world.

“The Island of the Fay” is a story of utmost Dark Romanticism and Fantasy, by which Poe has proven himself to be a master fantasist. It is a story that I believe all, especially writers, should read. There is delight, wisdom, and power in the processes of writing and of reading.

This story is a garden for the imagination, and it is certainly my cup of floral tea.

Though aught be but mad and doomed, may one and all live splendid and dream well for a little longer as can be afforded.

If you’ve liked what you’ve read here, check out some of Matthew Pungitore’s writings at his BookBaby author-page.

Matthew Pungitore graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English from Fitchburg State University. He volunteers with the Hingham Historical Society. The town of Hingham, Massachusetts is where he was brought up, and he has lived there for many years. Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories, Fiendilkfjeld Castle, and Midnight's Eternal Prisoner: Waiting For The Summer.

Contact him at: matthewpungitore_writer@outlook.com