Of Smokers and Gardens

         I don’t have any biographical information about Cesar T. Miranda (Argentina, 1922-2014), so we’ll have to take his pieces purely on their own merits.  Unfortunately, even that can’t be as detailed a look as I’d like, since they have lots of very fine texture which I can’t quite make out on the computer screen.  Another one I’d really love to examine in person!

        The fact of the very fine lines leads me to guess that Miranda worked with wood engraving tools, even though these pieces are listed as “woodcut.”  Indeed, in the second piece it does look like there’s some wood grain showing, which would confirm woodcut carved on a plank, even if the tiny thin lines look like they were scratched out with engraving tools.  All the more reason I wish I could get a closer look at these to get a clearer sense of Miranda’s method.

        The question of technique is only one of the interesting things about Miranda’s work.  He also has an interesting style that combines representationalism with a very abstract use of shapes and patterns.  The first piece shows a bird flying across a landscape of lance-shaped trees.  I love the way the bird has at least five wings and a glow as if it were almost a shooting star.  I like the way the wings, tail and wind(?) seem to weave among the trees.  I like the patterns on some of the trees.  The sky appears to be entirely filled with fine textures that look almost scribbly, and yet evoke distant hills and birds.

        The second piece is called “Smoker in the Window,” and although smoking is not something that I normally find at all attractive, there are once again some really interesting choices here.  The way the rectangle of the window cuts across the man looks to me more like a noir-style shadow of a window.  The texture around the mouth looks like deeply wrinkled lips, but the skritchy texture all over the face doesn’t seem to correspond to anything representational.

My favorite thing about this one is the fun clouds of smoke.

        Finally, an exuberant garden in which the flowers look like fireworks.  Once again it’s the engraving-style textures that give this woodcut its unique look, with zigzags, crosshatching, and an effervescent riot of shapes.  It’s not easy to give an impression of a wildly blooming garden without any color, but Miranda has managed it.

[Pictures: Paisaje con Pájaro, woodcut by Cesar T. Miranda, 1964;

Fumador en la Ventana, woodcut by Miranda, 1964;

Jardín Púrpura, woodcut by Miranda, 1964 (All images from Rhode Island School of Design).]

Sexton's Kind

         Most of the older fantasy poems I share are primarily about telling a story.  The more modern poems on themes of mythology, fantasy, and fairy tale tend to be about using fantasy images and references to explore the self, society, and so on.  Today I want to share a famous poem by Anne Sexton (U.S.A., 1928-1974), who was known for her confessional poetry, which she used in part to explore her own mental illness and troubled personal relationships.  No one would call her a fantasy poet, but in this poem she calls on the mythology of witches.  Because the poem is relatively recent (1960) and not in the public domain, I’m excerpting only the first verse, but I strongly encourage you to read the entire poem (3 verses) at Poetry Foundation.

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,   

haunting the black air, braver at night;   

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch   

over the plain houses, light by light:   

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.   

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.   

I have been her kind.

        The imagery throughout the poem is powerful, precise, and both shocking and moving.  This makes an excellent illustration of how fantasy can be used for far more than simply telling a story with magic in it.  It can evoke both the darkest and brightest corners of our hearts, it can help us wrestle with the limits of logic and science, and it can open us to new ways of considering issues we had thought we knew.  You can read articles analyzing this poem, but I think it’s most powerful if you just let those fantasy images and emotions move you; if you spend too much time trying to assign specific meanings to specific words and phrases you may be missing the point, and you’re almost certainly missing the magic.

[Picture: Wood engraving from Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazza, 1608 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Excerpt from Her Kind by Anne Sexton, from To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960 (from Poetry Foundation).]

Robin's Nest in the Studio

         Today's post is about the creation of my most recent rubber block print.  It’s directly based on a photograph I took in 2020 when, during the COVID lockdown, robins nested in the forsythia right outside our front door.  In fact, I took dozens of pictures over the course of three weeks, recording my new neighbors’ development from turquoise eggs to wrinkly pink hatchlings to scruffy brown fledglings.  This photo remains one of my all-time favorites, but for a long time I didn’t seriously consider making a block print from it.  I thought it wouldn’t work very well because it’s got so many fiddly details and because the bright colors are such an important part of what makes it a beautiful image.

        So here we are, four years later, and I’ve finally made a block print after all.  What changed my mind?  Well, back in 2020 I wrote a poem about the robins’ nest, and I decided that the poem should be included in my forthcoming book Bittersweetness & Light.  Every poem and story in the book will have illustrations, and although of course most of those illustrations are block prints, my first plan was to include the photograph as the illustration for the poem.  But I wasn’t sure I liked the less consistent design of having a mix of such different styles of illustrations, and my beta readers agreed.  Plan B, therefore, was to make a faux block print, which I do digitally.  (If you want to know about that process, you can read my prior post about how I make my Faux Woodcuts.)  I was quite pleased with the way that came out and put it in the book, and moved on with my life.

        But the digital version turned out to be a victim of its own success: it helped me see how this image really could work as an actual relief block print, and when I needed something to carve during a summer show, I decided to use the digital version as the design for a physical version.  I printed it out on the printer, traced over all the lines, and transferred the design to rubber to carve.  I used the harder rubber that I dislike, because I have a bunch of it and I thought it would work relatively well for all the fine lines.  I used the oil-based Caligo Safe Wash ink so that I could then use watercolor to paint in the colors of flowers, leaves, and eggs.

        It certainly isn't as bright as the photograph, but in the end I’m very happy with how this ended up, even though (or perhaps because) it’s fairly different from my usual style.  My next show will be in just over a month: Roxbury Open Studios on October 5-6, so that will be the Robin’s Nest’s debut and my first chance to see whether it makes other people as happy as it makes me!  (And yes, this is the version that will be accompanying my poem in the book.)

[Pictures: Robin’s Nest, photo by AEGNydam, 2020;

Robin’s Nest, rubber block print with watercolor by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]