Magical Musical Monsters

         This little collection of musical creatures begins with a bird, which might not seem particularly magical.  There are certainly plenty of birds with exceptional songs throughout folklore, and some of them are even magical, but this bird doesn’t just sing birdsong like all those others.  No, it sports a human head and arms with which it plays an instrument.  Frankly, it seems like kind of a waste to force a bird to resort to human means to produce its music, but this creature makes music so heavenly that one can never tire of hearing it, so I guess it’s not complaining.  It’s called karyōbinga in Japanese (from kalavinca in Sanskrit), and it lives in the Buddhist paradise Gokuraku jōdo.  (I should apologize for implying by the title of this post that it’s a monster.  I just couldn’t resist the alliteration.)  This wood block print by Hokusai is masterful, with wonderful details on the wings and on the flowing robes that morph into tail plumes.

        We turn now to a creature that is just as musical but certainly very far from exemplifying celestial beauty.  There are several strange monsters in this wood block print from a book of emblems.  The emblem illustrated “The four passions of man,” although I confess I can’t quite figure out what four passions those might be, and which monster represents which.  So forget all that and just concentrate on the funny little guy in the lower right.  I think he’s actually adorable, a sort of animate bagpipe playing his own nose.  Particularly when you compare him with the other monsters, I think I’d definitely prefer whatever passion he’s representing!  Maybe it’s the passion for music.

        Finally I had to add one more fabulous creature with a musical nose, even though I can’t find any wood block prints of these.  The final two illustrations depict the siranis, a creature that can be found in The Wonders of Creation, by 13th century Iranian cosmographer Zakariya al-Qazwini.  According to him, the siranis has twelve holes along its snout, and when it breathes it makes beautiful music.  This music is so beautiful that animals gather around, and the siranis can then catch and eat whatever it wants.  On a fun etymological note, the name siranis actually derives from Greek seiren, the sea nymph who lures sailors with her song.  Obviously something went rather astray along the journey as this magical creature travelled from Greece to Iran!  These depictions of it are quite charming, and while the second one is by a more masterful hand that gives it a lithe grace, you really can’t beat the adorably goofy poodle hairdo on the first!

        Music is such a powerful force that it’s no surprise that mythical creatures from the sublime to the ridiculous produce it as part of their magic.  Obviously the best one to hear would be the first, but I can’t help feeling very curious indeed to hear the others.

[Pictures: Karyōbinga, color wood block print by Hokusai, ca. 1820-33 (Image from The Met);

Emblema. LXVI, wood block print from Emblematum Tyrocinia by Matthäus Holtzwart, 1581 (Image from Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum);

Siranis, illumination from The Wonders of Creation by Qazvini, early 15th century (Image from Smithsonian Freer Gallery);

Siranis, illumination from The Wonders of Creation by Qazwini,1280 (Image from Bavarian State Library).]

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).]