Work in Progress

        I hadn't done a wood block print in quite a while, and I recently bought myself a new wood-cutting small v-gouge, so I knew that I wanted to work with wood for my next piece.  I decided to try something ambitious (or possibly just foolhardy.)  I designed an image with lots of precise, geometric little details, just setting myself up for tiny lines of wood to break off and the grain to force my cuts in the wrong direction…
        I know that my wood block prints will always be rougher and less controlled than rubber block prints, so I don't just pick wood or rubber randomly.  I choose to use wood when I know that a rough, "carvier" look is what I want, as in animals with roughly patterned skins, or a scene in a more "primitive" style.  My first instinct with a design like this would be to keep it controlled and clean by using rubber.  But what about doing something a little different for once?  I thought a scene of medieval or Tudor half-timbered houses would look cool if it were a little rougher, in keeping with the age, imperfection, and wear-and-tear of such old buildings.  But of course until I get to the printing stage I really have no idea whether or not this will work.

        The first step is to draw the design, and since I don't like any of the ways to transfer a design to a wood block, I draw directly onto the wood.  This new design is heavily based on photographs of several wonderful old buildings in Germany and England, but it's really a fantasy, my own fictionalized image of half-timbered architecture.  Although there are lots of details, architecture is straight-forward enough to draw that it wasn't too hard to do it directly on the wood without excessive need for erasing.  And the only thing I worried about reversing was my initials, since it doesn't really matter which way the buildings face.

        And then I started carving.  Carving wood is slower than rubber.  It takes longer to clear out each unwanted area.  Sometimes I use an x-acto knife to cut across the grain, before clearing to make sure a cut stops where it should, and after clearing to free any
small shards of wood still hanging on.  Furthermore, because carving wood is more physically demanding, I do it for shorter stretches at a time.  So it could be quite a while before this block is ready to print.  And only then will I see whether all this carving worked.  All these little "mistakes" when too much or too little is cut away… will they give the piece a wonderfully natural, hand-crafted, antiquey-distressed look?  Or will they simply ruin the whole blasted thing?

[Pictures: pencil sketch on wood;

wood block in the process of carving, by AEGN;

Photo of my hands at work by PGN, 2012.]

The "Star Wars" Theory of Attraction

        Go ahead and throw out your copy of Cosmo, or Seventeen Magazine, or whatever.  You don't need their dating advice any more.  In honor of Valentine's Day I offer here a theory I discovered and tested while I was in college (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away).  Although its power is profound, I must begin with the caveats.  Subjects of the study have all been heterosexual females who were around 5-10 years of age at the time they first saw "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope."  I have no idea whether the theory holds for any other demographic group.  I would, however, be delighted to accept for future analysis any data you can provide.

        The basic premise of the theory is that women reveal what sort of men they're attracted to in their attitude towards the two main heroes of "Star Wars," -- but it's important to remember that it works only with girls who first saw the movie at the correct age.  If you fall within this demographic, remember very carefully how you felt the first time you saw "Star Wars Episode IV."  Whom did you prefer: Han Solo or Luke Skywalker?  Think carefully, and be sure your answer represents your attitude at the time.  The vast majority of women prefer Han Solo when they get older, but that's irrelevant.  If you had more of a crush on Artoo-Detoo or Obi Wan Kenobi than either of the others, that doesn't count, either.  But if you distinctly remember loving either Luke or Han, then my "Star Wars" Theory of Attraction ™ can provide you with a valuable tool for analyzing your own dating habits.

        Let me explain how the "Star Wars" Effect works.  When you see the movie at the right age, it isn't important that Han Solo has a sense of humor, or that he's Harrison Ford and gorgeous.  It isn't important that Luke Skywalker is a teenager with a tendency to whine.  All that matters is that Luke is a good, idealistic guy who's trying to do the right thing, while Han is an unpredictable, exciting adventurer.  If you are a Han woman, you consider romance an adventure.  You are attracted to "dangerous" and exciting men and reckless relationships.  If you are a Luke woman, you go for genuinely nice guys and you want your relationships to be safe and comfortable.

        But perhaps you don't see the importance of knowing whether you're a Han woman or a Luke woman.  Knowing what type you are can help you guard against the traps you're most likely to be caught in.

        A Han woman, if she isn't careful, sets herself up to be knocked down.  In extreme cases a woman can think that being treated badly is part of the excitement of the relationship.  A Han woman often thinks that she's the one who will tame the "dangerous" man she's chosen.  Or even if she picks a man who seems nice enough, she may throw caution to the winds and conduct her relationship at a breakneck pace.  Han women must guard against the illusion that bad is good.  But don't despair.  After all, Han Solo himself was a true hero, and there are men who are right and also exciting.

        A Luke woman isn't even attracted to a man unless she thinks he's basically a good guy.  But there are plenty of men who are superficially nice but definitely the wrong man underneath.  A Luke woman must guard against letting her desire for security lull her into relying too completely on her man.  Her desire for stability may keep her working to maintain a relationship with a False Luke - a guy who said all the right things at first, but then begins to take you for granted or make you feel insecure or otherwise unhappy.  But let your instincts for a good man guide you and you'll end up with a truly heroic Luke.

        So there it is, the "Star Wars" Theory of Attraction: Better Living through Sci Fi and Fantasy!  Happy Valentine's Day!

[Pictures: movie poster for "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope," 2004.  I can't find the name of the designer.;

Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford;
Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.]

Siqueiros's "Grabados"

        David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) was one of the major Mexican political artists, especially known for murals.  I think political art requires a very tricky balancing act: to reveal injustice or social problems without being merely hateful and vicious, and simultaneously to express a clear message without being mere propaganda.  That's why I seldom like political art regardless of whether or not I agree with its message - I just don't think it's usually very good art.

        That said, these wood block prints by Siqueiros caught my eye.  He called them "grabados," which my Spanish dictionary translates as "engravings," but that must also be the same word for "woodcuts."  In any case, these thirteen wood block prints were apparently carved in 1930 while Siqueiros was in prison.  They were published as a book in 1931, with originals in black ink on orange tissue paper pasted into the pages.  I don't know what Siqueiros had to say about the theme of the set.  They're clearly representing his recurring theme of workers and oppression.  They emerged, like all his art, from his political convictions, but some of them have a visual impact that seems more universal.

        Two of the prints in particular really appealed to me.  They're very simple and stark, but that gives the figures a dignity that lots of precise little details might not
have shown so well.  I think of the first one as a mother and child, but its title, "The Family," gives it a slightly different feel - these two are complete in themselves.  There's both a beauty in that, and a question mark.

        I see the second as wise women - but that's just me.  It turns out that its title is "At the Pawn Brokers," so presumably these people represent the nameless desperate poor.  But perhaps Siqueiros meant for us to see them as both desperate and yet still possessed of wisdom and dignity.  In any case, in both these blocks I like the straight, stiff postures, the enveloping shawls, and the blocks of shadow.

        You can see all thirteen woodcuts in the series here at Jose Vera Fine Art & Antiques.

[Pictures: The Family, and At the Pawn Brokers, wood block prints by David Alfaro Siqueiros from 13 Grabados, 1931.]

The Cheesemonster Cometh!

        My new book is out!  Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster is the final installment in the Kate and Sam Adventure trilogy, and it's been a long time coming for such a little book.  My own Kate and Sam adventure began three and a half years ago, when I asked P and T (then just turned 6) if they'd like me to write a book for them.  They enthusiastically began offering suggestions for what the book should include, and when it was written they helped me illustrate the story.  When it was finished they loved Kate and Sam to the Rescue, obviously, and requested a sequel.  I began work on Kate and Sam and the Chipmunks of Doom.

        Meanwhile, proud P and T had shared the first book at school, and in the spring I was invited to visit their classes to talk about it.  T's teacher read Kate and Sam to the Rescue to the whole class as a read-aloud, and it went over very well with the first graders.  They all asked whether I would write any more books.  I told them I was working on Chipmunks of Doom, but I also happened to mention, just as a throwaway line, that T, P, and I had joked about the title Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster.  (We sometimes said our cat Nightshade was a cheese monster, because cheese was the only people food she ever wanted, but she wanted it really badly…)  After my classroom visit I got a whole sheaf of adorable letters and pictures from all the first graders, and to my astonishment, quite a few of the letters urged me enthusiastically to write about a cheese monster.

        So, after the second book was finished I dutifully tried to come up with a cheese monster plot.  I had a few ideas, and I got D to help me work out some more.  But I soon stalled out.  Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster was not a book I was enjoying working on.  I didn't really want to write it…  So the Cheesemonster languished while I wrote Ruin of Ancient Powers instead.  But all that time, whenever I showed my face at school to run a table at the art festival, to volunteer at the library, to attend a concert, one of those kids was always sure to ask me whether I was working on Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster yet.  I began to feel (if I can be so pretentious) like Conan Doyle with Holmes!  But this bunch of kids at P and T's school have been Kate and Sam's most loyal fans, and they deserved that I make an effort.  Last spring I sat down with the Cheesemonster once again.

        And finally something began to come together.  Indeed, I even began to be excited about it.  It stopped being a chore and started being a story to be told.  And so the Kate and Sam trilogy was finally finished, and illustrated with the help of T and P, and the copy to be donated to the school library is sitting ready to go.  Oh, I'm definitely finished with the series now - P and T and their classmates will soon outgrow it, and I'm ready for other things, too.  But I've gratefully dedicated this book to those students and their belief in me as an author!

        As for Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster, here's the blurb:

        When the cows are stolen from a nearby farm, Sam and Kate think it’s a job for the police… until they realize that solving this strange crime will require help from the neighborhood birds and beasts.  That means it’s another adventure for Kate and Sam, the only humans who can speak animal language and know the secret of the magical creatures.

        But why does the strange thief steal a cow-spotted mailbox?  How many thieves
are there anyway?  And most mysterious of all, what kind of monster is leaving huge, round footprints that smell like cheese?  It’s a good thing Kate and Sam get help from animals large and small as they struggle to solve these puzzles and rescue all the prisoners of the Cheesemonster.  There will be beetles and robots, dragons and fairies, monsters and clues and disguises.  But never fear!  Through darkest night and deepest swamp Sam, Kate, and their friends old and new will use all their creativity, courage, and common sense to save the day once again.

        The third adventure in the Kate and Sam trilogy joins the others as a perfect read-aloud to be enjoyed with children of many ages.  Emphasizing the power of kindness, creativity and courage, these books are gentle enough for pre-schoolers at bedtime, but complex, humorous, and engaging enough not only for older elementary children, but even for adults reading to them.

        So, if you've enjoyed Kate and Sam's previous adventures, please join them again!  And if you've never read any but would like to start now, sign up for my Goodreads giveaway of the first book in the series.  (And don't forget to post reviews on amazon and Goodreads!)

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Kate and Sam to the Rescue

by Anne E.G. Nydam

Giveaway ends March 01, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

[Pictures: front cover of Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster, with illustration by AEGN;

The Fairy Godmother and Beccan, pencil and watercolor by TPN, 2011;

Making a hat-unscrewing machine, pencil by PGN (photoshop background by AEGN), 2012;

back cover, with illustrations by AEGN (middle), TPN (top), and PGN (bottom).]

The Oldest Block Prints in the World

        I wanted to do today's post on the oldest known block prints, since relief printing is such an ancient process.  But "the oldest block print" is actually not such a simple idea.  First of all, a lot depends on what you define as block printing.  For example, the cylinder seals of Sumeria date back to 3500 BCE and were created in much the same way as a relief printing block.  A design was carved into stone so that when the stone was pressed into clay the design would be transferred, as many times as you cared to repeat, and of course in reverse.  But I think you need ink to qualify as printing, so I'm not counting seals.

        On the other hand, some people think you have to print on paper to qualify, and many even want to start the "history of printing" with the earliest printed books.  The "Diamond Sutra" is often cited as the earliest printed book (a scroll, actually), dating from 868 in China, but it's technically the oldest dated printed book we've found.  “The oldest extant woodblock printed text on paper in East Asia is the Dharani sutra discovered in the Seokka-tap (Shakyamuni pagoda) in 1966 in Bulguk-sa Monastery in Gyeongju. Since this pagoda was completed in 751, the printed sutra placed within has the terminal date of 751.”  In any case, however, I think the paper/book definition is too narrow.

        To me, the essence of relief printing is

1. carving a design into some material hard enough to print with

2. spreading ink on the raised areas only

3. transferring the ink to the material to be decorated

4. repeating

        This definition allows me to include fabric, which seems to have predated printing on paper by at least six hundred years, and probably much longer.  The earliest surviving samples of relief printed fabric date to the Han Dynasty (before 220) in China.  (Alas, I could find no pictures to show you.)

        But of course the samples of printing that archaelogists have actually found are undoubtedly not really the earliest.  Fabric and paper don't last long at all, and even wooden printing blocks have a tough time lasting ten or twenty centuries.  The Diamond Sutra mentioned above, although it's one of the earliest printed books people have found, is clearly not a basic or experimental effort.  There must have been any number of less technically sophisticated books printed before it, but they haven't survived (or at the very least have yet to be discovered.)  As for the printing of textiles,
that could have been going on for centuries before the date of any surviving fragments.  Evidence of early printed fabrics has to come from pictures of people wearing patterned clothing that looks as if it might have been printed.  But of course no one knows for sure what process might have been used for these patterns.  One example comes from murals in an Egyptian tomb at Beni Hasan, dating to about 1980BCE.

        Although ancient relief printing was used and viewed in a very different way from modern artists' printmaking, it's still cool to try to see where it all began.

[Pictures: Cylinder seal showing monsters, jasper "printed" on clay, Mesopotamia, Uruk Period (4100-3000BC), (Item in the Louvre);

Frontispiece from the "Diamond Sutra" (aka "Diamond Cutter of Perfect Wisdom") wood block print on paper, Dunhuang China, 868, (Item in the British Library);

Replica of the "Dharani Sutra", wood block print on paper, Gyeongju, Korea, c. 750 (Item in National Museum of Korea);

Nomadic traders in patterned clothes, detail from painted mural in the tomb of Khnumhotep II, Beni Hasan, Egypt, c.1980 BCE.

(All images are from Wikimedia Commons.)]

Quotation from: Kim, Kumja Paik, Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of Enlightenment, 918–1392. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2003.

Words of the Month - Artificial Life

        It seems that people have always desired to create artificial life, especially artificial humanoids.  Is it humans' desire to have the creative power of gods?  Males' jealousy of the power of women to give birth?  People's greed for power over offspring who, unlike biological children, can be controlled?  Whatever it is, this month's words highlight some of the different ways people have imagined creating artificial life.  I've listed them in the order the words entered the English language, which in some cases was a bit surprising to me.  It is not the order in which humans devised these creatures.

homunculus (1650-60, from Latin roots for "little man")  In its fantasy sense a homunculus is a miniature person created out of various materials such as wood, metal, and flesh, and given life through alchemy or some such magic.  Like many of the artificial life forms here, it's often a servant of its creator.  Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke features a charming homunculus.  There's an odd picture book Hannah and the Homunculus by Kurt Hassler in which a willful girl gains total control over her parents with the help of a word-collecting homunculus.  (And apparently the "Secret Series" by Pseudonymous Bosch includes a homunculus, but I haven't read those.)

android (1720-30, from Greek roots for "man-like") An android is simply an automaton in the form of a human, placing it in science fiction rather than fantasy.  I was surprised this word predated science fiction as a genre, since nowadays everyone thinks of C3-PO from "Star Wars," Data from "Star Trek," or Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  But apparently even back in the eighteenth century people were trying to build mechanical humans for fun and profit.  A nice example of the pre-electronic version is Tik-Tok from Ozma of Oz and subsequent books by L. Frank Baum.  (The automaton in The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is, of course, the non-fantastical kind.  T was pretty disappointed that "all" it could do was draw, but of course these old androids are truly amazing!)

Frankenstein (1830-40, from Mary Shelley's novel published in 1818)  As any English major knows, "Frankenstein" was the name of the scientist who was trying to create artificial life out of bits and pieces of human corpses and electricity.  The creature he created was never given a name in the novel.  Colloquially, however, Frankenstein means the monster, specifically a monster that was deliberately created but then cannot be controlled and becomes dangerous and destructive.  Not only has the word Frankenstein shifted meaning from the creator to the creation, but the segment Franken-, which etymologically is meaningless, is now a productive prefix in English.  In examples including Frankenfish and Frankenfood it usually signifies something cobbled together and running amok (often specifically genetically engineered organisms).  The book in which to read about a "Frankenstein" is, of course, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, though it isn't by any means a juvenile book (even if all "classics" seem to get shelved in the children's section these days.)  I can't think of any others, though I'm sure there must be some that share the theme, if not by name.  The Franny K. Stein books by Jim Benton are, of course, a reference to the name of the mad scientist, but I don't recall that Franny K. ever tries to create artificial life in any of the volumes that P read.

zombie (1865-75, from voodoo, from Kongo or Kimbundu for "god," which seems to me like a strange derivation)  Zombies, like Frankenstein monsters, involve artificially returning the life to dead bodies.  Like many other forms of artificial life, their creators want something without free will that will obey any command.  In the case of zombies such commands tend to be all about spite and revenge.  However, in the more modern imagining of zombies they are more self-motivated - even if their motivation is purely to eat brains.  I can't list any good books including zombies, because I don't read books about zombies!  (Except for Reg the zombie in various books by Terry Pratchett.)  But I am mildly amused by the game "Plants vs. Zombies" - does that count?

golem (1895-1900, from Yiddish from Hebrew for "shapeless thing")  The golem comes from Jewish folklore and is a creature molded from clay and brought to life through knowledge of the Cabalah.  Though not the original golem, the most famous is the Golem of Prague.  There are many retellings of the story.  A rather dark version
that pulls no punches but has dramatic Caldecott-winning illustrations done with cut paper is Golem by David Wisniewski.  Chapter books featuring golems include The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud, and Fablehaven by Brandon Mull (I did not like this book, mostly because I felt that the plot was driven purely by the unbelievable selfishness and stupidity of [at least] one of the protagonists.  But both P and T absolutely love the series, so obviously what bothered me didn't bother them.  And as a bonus the series also includes a limberjack with artificial life, so it's got that going for it.)  For the younger reader or listener may I suggest Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster?  For older readers I also suggest Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (not juvenile, but a story that really explores questions of free will, personhood, and what it means to be alive).

robot (1920, coined by Karel Capek from Czech for "compulsory labor owed by peasants")  A robot, like an android, has a scientific rather than magical explanation for its ability to mimic life.  Robots range from rough chunks of metal that speak in a monotone to beings that can pass for fully human.  There are far too many books featuring robots to try for a big list, but I'll mention three series that P enjoyed when he was probably around second grade:  Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot by Janet and Isaac Asimov, the "Andrew Lost" series by J.C. Greenburg, and the "Akiko" series by Mark Crilley.

[Pictures: Making a homunculus, 19th century engraving from Faust Part II by Goethe (image from Wikimedia Commons);

The cheese golem, drawing by AEGN from Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster, 2012.]

Queen Anne's Lace

        Queen Anne's lace is the wild carrot, introduced to America from Europe.  The froth of tiny white flowers looks like lace, and the single dark flower in the middle is said to represent a drop of blood where the queen pricked herself with her needle.  The funny thing is, though, it isn't called Queen Anne's lace any place there ever was a Queen Anne.  In the UK its common name is apparently "bishop's lace."  But Queen Anne's lace is a much better name, for two obvious reasons.  First, anything named after "Anne" has to be good.  (Okay, there may be a slight bias there.)  But secondly, anything with a name that begins with Q is invaluable to those of us with a love of alphabetics.  I have yet to see a botanical alphabet with Q represented by anything else but Queen Anne's lace.  (Hmm.. I guess you could use quince…)

        I have here today three block prints of Queen Anne's lace, from three gardening alphabets.  First up is the Q from Gerard Brender à Brandis's Wood Engraver's Alphabet.  It shows his all-over, meticulously detailed style.  But although his depiction is very detailed, it's not laid out at all like a botanical print but instead seems more like a close-up snapshot in a field, or else a design for fabric.  Queen Anne's lace, with its tiny white lines, is a natural for carving into a black background as Brender à Brandis has done here.

        The second Q comes from Mary Azarian's Gardener's Alphabet.  Azarian paints her wood block prints in this book with watercolor, making them perhaps less dramatic, but brighter and more cheerful.  Azarian's version is no botanical drawing either, since she's shown not only the plant but a whole scene of people picking and enjoying the flowers.  Although this piece mostly uses the more traditional black lines on white, the thick field of plants and flowers is actually done by leaving the black background.

        Finally, my version of Queen Anne's lace, made as the Q for my botanical alphabet poster.  Unlike the other two, I've focussed on just one plant, but like them I left the black background around all the tiny white details.  I made sure to include one of my favorite parts of the flower - not just the little flowerets, but the delicate, feathery spikes of the leaves and bracts.

[Pictures: Queen Anne's Lace, wood engraving by Gerard Brender à Brandis, from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008;

Queen Anne's Lace, wood block print with watercolor by Mary Azarian, from A Gardener's Alphabet, 2000;

Queen Anne's Lace, rubber block print by AEGN, 2007.]

Happy New Year of the Dragon!

        Yesterday was the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and this is now the Year of the Dragon.  I shall, of course, celebrate with block prints of dragons!  While you enjoy them, consider how the dragon is magnanimous, stately, vigorous, strong, self-assured, proud, noble, direct, dignified, eccentric, intellectual, fiery, passionate, decisive, pioneering, artistic, generous, and loyal, but also tactless, arrogant, imperious, tyrannical, demanding, intolerant, dogmatic, violent, impetuous, and brash.  No wonder you need to be circumspect when dealing with dragons.  And no wonder dragons never responded well to those medieval European knights charging in pell mell with their rude swords and accusations.
        All the dragon wood block prints I have here are actually Japanese.  You'll often hear that Japanese

dragons have three claws per foot, while Indonesian and Korean dragons have four, and Chinese dragons have five.  Alternately, common dragons have four and only Imperial dragons get to sport five.  In any case, count up the toes on these wood block prints, do the math, and make of it what you will.  I have two nineteenth century depictions and a modern one.  The second of these dragons, by Kuniyoshi, is interesting because the wood block print was clearly trying to reproduce the look of a brush painting.  You can see how the ends of the lines are carved to look as though they're fading off like brush strokes.  (Hajime, the artist who made this third dragon, is notable because according to one web site, he "began his artistic career as a sculpture."  If so, he's done a great job of overcoming his stiffness - I thought his work was beautiful even by normal human standards!)

        There's another excellent mythological creature associated with the Chinese New Year, and that's the Nian.  Nians live under the ocean or up in the mountains and used to come out at the New Year to attack people, especially yummy juicy children.  Luckily, despite its ferocity, it's afraid of loud noises and the color red, and now that people know to take these simple precautions, it hasn't been seen by humans for a long time.  There are several versions of the Nian's ultimate fate.  In one version it becomes the mount of a priest.  In another version it's slain by the villagers who banded together against it.  In another story it's defeated by a lion, and in yet another version it's the villagers in a lion costume who defeat the dreadful monster.  That's why you get lion dances at New Year's festivities.  (Some lion dancers once performed at P and T's school.  Part of the dance included the lion kicking a cabbage (or was it an orange?) up into the air and then catching it in its mouth.  To everyone's incredible delight, one of the cabbages (or oranges?) was kicked so high it flew straight into a big can light above
the stage and exploded it with sparks!  Now that's a dance routine anyone can
appreciate.)  So, what does the Nian look like?  That's an excellent question.  I sure wish I knew the answer.  Maybe sort of like a Chinese lion with touches of unicorn and ox?  I wasn't able to find any definitive traditional depictions.
        In a cool linguistic note, however, "nian" is also the Chinese word for "year."  So,  Xin Nian Hao - Good New Year (and good new Nian) - to all!

[Pictures: Dragon, Japanese color wood block print, Chinese school, 19th century, (image from Wikimedia Commons);

Dragon and Waves, color wood block print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c. 1827-31 (image from the Smithsonian Institution);

Dragon 8, color wood block print with gold and silver, by Namiki Hajime, 2007 (image from this web site);

Nian, from an e-book - see this advertisement for details.]

T's Favorite Poem

        I can't remember exactly how it came up, but P and T have had a poetry unit recently in school and T said something or other to which the only appropriate response was to start reciting "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

             The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

             The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

             The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, 

And the highwayman came riding—

  Riding—riding— 

             The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

        I know the first several verses by heart, but after a while I declared that I wasn't doing the poem justice, and I fetched a book and started again, reading it aloud to T and P with all the melodrama and beauty it deserves.

             Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

             With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!

             Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,

  When they shot him down on the highway,

  Down like a dog on the highway,

             And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

        "The Highwayman" (1906) is not the sort of poem that's fashionable these days.  The story it tells is pure soap opera without any attempt at exploration of self or capturing what it is to be alive in our modern world.  The language is over-the-top poetical, right down to Tim the Ostler's "hair like moldy hay," which cracks me up every time.  If Noyes submitted this poem to a critic today he would be scorned and derided and held up as an example of the worst kind of amateur idiocy.  He would certainly not be published, much less admired.

        So let me tell you what happened when I finished my dramatic reading of this less than stellar poem.  T immediately ran to get paper and pencil, settled herself on the loveseat beside me, and composed a poem of her own.  Her poem was about 20 lines long, describing a fairy gathering in a dark woods.  It borrowed the use of repetition from Noyes, as well as a certain flavor of moonlight and mystery.  Over the next week or so T reread "The Highwayman" enough times to memorize the first verse and bits and pieces from other parts of the poem.  All fired up, she had me print out several pages of poems for her, her favorites selected from the stack of anthologies I put in her eager hands.

        In their school poetry units over the past few years, P and T have been regularly instructed not to make their poems rhyme.  When they come home complaining, I explain to them that the teachers are just trying to make sure that their first priority is to pick the perfect word for the situation, instead of trying to jam in an irrelevant or inappropriate word simply because it happens to rhyme.  But after trying to help justify the teachers' reasoning, I go on to sympathize with my children, because in my heart I know something about poetry that all the critics of the past fifty years or more seem to have missed.  I'd be willing to bet (if I were a betting woman) that "The Highwayman," for all its melodrama, has created more poetry-lovers than all the deep, gritty, relevant, impenetrable words of today's "best" poems.  Prose broken up into lines is not poetry, and perhaps it takes a child to prove that simple fact.

        Of course I'm absolutely not saying that words have to rhyme to be poetry.  What I am saying is that children - and perhaps adults, too - don't learn to love poetry by reading just any old words.  The power of real poetry is that it grips us more deeply than the mere meanings of the words.  The words of poetry are more than their sum.  They are meaning and sound, rhythm and emotion and color and light, exploding pictures in the mind and unfurling blossoms in the heart.  Poems pour into us in a purer form than prose, and it's all those poetic tools that make it possible: simile and metaphor, startling images, juxtapositions, repetition, alliteration, rhythm, and yes, rhyme.  The best poems sound like they rhyme even when they don't, because the words move with such a cadence as they pour in.  And the poems that sound just like prose?  Well, do they make you grab a pencil and start writing your own visions?  Do they cling to your imagination so that within days you have them by heart?  Do they make you hungry for more poetry?  That's what "The Highwayman" did for T.

[Pictures: Turpin clearing the Toll Gate, wood block print, anonymous, 1837;

Tom King, wood block print for a Victorian paper theatre.]