Distant Stars

         Here’s my most recent block print, an epic one by my standards, as it's very nearly the full size of the rubber blocks that I use (18x12 inches) and therefore as big as I can ever go.  (It is cut down slightly just to make it fit well into a standard size frame.)  The process was not too unusual, and indeed the star areas with white carved into black actually go very quickly, despite all the words.  Carving black words on a white background, as in the title, is much more difficult.  I tried a few experiments with pressing instead of carving: the circles and diamonds in the border were pressed with small bits of metal tubing.  The stars were also pressed in with a couple of different sizes of phillips screwdrivers.

        Because people always ask me how long it takes to make a print, I once again tried to keep track of my time.  The end result was about 17 and a half hours, including 3 hours to draw the design, 12 and a half hours of carving, and 2 hours of printing.  I have not yet matted or framed any, which will of course take more time.  Generally I never worked for more than an hour at a time, although I might carve for a few sessions in one day.  This was spread out over many days - even longer because the block was too big to bring with me to carve during art shows last month, so there was a bit of a hiatus while I worked on smaller pieces.

        The idea for this block had been floating around in my head for some time, because I’ve always thought the constellations are so random.  I thought it would be fun and funny to make up a batch of constellations highlighting the crazy selection of pictures people could claim to see in the stars of some alien fantasy world.  I brainstormed lots of possible constellations, but the ones I ended up including are

     The Kiwi - Because I love kiwis!

     The Dirigible - Maybe a common form of transportation for these people

     The Guppy - Not all constellations are large and complex

     The Silverfish - I was trying to think of something utterly random and not usually considered to be worth the stellar treatment

     The Polypodrollery - An inside joke; this is one of the malacomorphs I invented in a little block print, for inclusion in my book On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination

     The Salad Fork - I was amused by the specificity: it’s not just any fork

     The Five Socks - Does this world have 5-footed people, or 6-footed people missing a sock, or bipedal people missing one sock out of 3 pairs?  Presumably there’s a myth that explains this.

     The Glekprunk - I found this creature in the Luttrell Psalter, a manuscript from 1325-1340.  Because it’s a marginal doodle, I had to make up a name for it.  (Prunk is German for “magnificence.”)

     The Starnose Mole - What more appropriate creature to be a constellation?

     The Teapot - People born under the sign of the celestial Teapot are warm and inviting, but can be quick-tempered.

     The Diploceraspis - This is (or was, anyway) one of those real creatures that seems as strange as any fantasy beast.  Perhaps in this world they’re still around.

     The Crwth - An intrinsically funny word in English

        Having decided on my constellations, I also had to figure out how to fill the corners of my star chart.  Many of the fancy renaissance star charts feature decorative scenes in the four corners, and they’re often scenes from mythology.  Obviously my distant world needed its own mythology, so I depicted Night weaving a starry blanket for her daughter the Moon.  (I also wrote a poem about this, which will no doubt be shared in due course.)  In the lower corners I put philosopher-astronomers’ towers for their observations.  These are more-or-less copied from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), but with the telescopes added.  The sun is also adapted from a renaissance woodcut.

        Of course, since the people who view this sky aren’t Romans with Roman mythology, they obviously wouldn’t speak Latin, let alone English, but since I wanted people in our world to be able to read the captions, I had to put them “in translation.”  Therefore I went with English for the constellation names for maximum comprehension, and Latin for the title cartouche for maximum fancy learnedness.

        All those little words aren’t ever as perfectly carved as I would like, and I didn’t notice until after I’d printed the whole batch that it’s missing the little connecting spots in the lower right corner of the border.  Despite my measuring and drawing guidelines, the border elements are pretty wonky, and I accidently carved away a border line from the left edge of the title cartouche.  I probably should have added a lot more stars, and the experiment with the phillips screwdrivers  did not make as clear an X as I had hoped.  So many imperfections!  And yet on the whole I’m pretty pleased with it.  I hope it pleases the imagination of others, too.

[Picture: Distant Stars, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com.)]

They

        Despite a couple of recent posts about my own poetry activities, it’s actually been quite a while since I shared a fantasy poem.  So here’s one called simply Fantasy, by Ruth Mather Skidmore from 1933.

I think if I should wait some night in an enchanted forest
With tall dim hemlocks and moss-covered branches,
And quiet, shadowy aisles between the tall blue-lichened trees;
With low shrubs forming grotesque outlines in the moonlight,
And the ground covered with a thick carpet of pine needles
So that my footsteps made no sound, —
They would not be afraid to glide silently from their hiding places
To the white patch of moonlight on the pine needles,
And dance to the moon and the stars and the wind.

Their arms would gleam white in the moonlight
And a thousand dewdrops sparkle in the dimness of their hair;
But I should not dare to look at their wildly beautiful faces.

        This poem is a bit unusual, for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, the odd number of lines in the final stanza leaves it feeling abrupt, almost unfinished.  To be clear, this doesn’t feel like a mistake, but like pulling the rug out from under the reader to leave us feeling unbalanced.  The structure is also sneaky: starting with that conditional “if” and then walking us into the woods with those long descriptive clauses building up and building up… Until suddenly we’re confronted with the mysterious gleaming figures, beautiful but terrifying.

        There’s also a bit of a mystery about the author, who apparently never published another poem except this one, which came out in an anthology called Off to Arcady when she was a student at Vassar College.  It’s certainly easy enough to believe that a woman might be an extremely accomplished poet without ever having more than one poem published - especially after she got married and had a family to care for.  Still, you’d think that this early taste of success would have encouraged her to continue.  Ruth Mather Skidmore’s complete disappearance as a poet is almost as strange and unsettling as those dancers in the white patch of moonlight on the pine needles.

[Picture: The Fairy Dance (slightly cropped), painting by Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, 1895 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Thanks to Theodora Goss for posting the poem at Poems of the Fantastic and Macabre.] 

World Oceans Day

         World Oceans Day will be June 8, so here’s a selection of block prints of the ocean.  I’m starting with waves in the rain off a coast.  I love the colors in this woodcut by Henri Rivière.  This is an ocean that’s paradoxically almost soothingly rough - I wouldn’t want to be out on a fishing boat in the rain, but there’s no storm or drama.  It would be a good ocean to look at from the cozy warmth and safety of a cottage on shore, reminding us of the ocean’s enormity without being threatening.  Rivière was one of that

first generation of European artists who encountered Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and were enormously influenced by them.  In this piece he uses about 5 blocks, I think.  (You can see some of Rivière's views of the Eiffel Tower in this post 36 More Views.)

        Next is a piece with a bit more drama as a full moon shines down on a much larger wave.  There’s no shore in sight, and this piece is meant to illustrate the oceans before the evolution of humans.  Its caption says “Originally, when the Moon was much closer to the Earth, it caused tremendous tidal waves.”  This is a sort of primordial ocean, with a sense of solitude.  The very fine engraving makes the shading in the clouds less carve-y than I usually like, but I think the portrayal of the moonlight reflecting on the water is gorgeous.

        Yet another version of rough waves uses yet another carving technique.  In this one by Merlyn Chesterman the engraved lines are very carve-y indeed, and I love the roughness of the lines building into the roughness of the waves.  This piece looks like it may use about 3 blocks, with gradations of grey in two of them.  Water and oceans are a very common theme for Chesterman, and I’ve shared one of her pieces before that demonstrates how she uses wood grain to portray water.  You can see that in my post Carving Water.

        And now let’s take a look at a couple of pieces that highlight not just the ocean but humans’ interaction with it.  This one by Molly Lemon is the positive side of the relationship.  A diver explores the wonder and beauty of the deep, perhaps studying in order to help with conservation.  The light filtering into the clear water is beautiful, and its fading calls the diver into the mystery of the depths.  (In another prior post you can see a couple of Lemon's Tiny Reduction Landscapes.)

        I have to end, however, with the warning.  Our relationship with the ocean has been careless at best and abusive at worst.  This piece by Beth Robertson mixes visual symbols to remind us that time is running out before our

oceans are completely choked by plastic and other threats.  Humans have always been fascinated by the ocean, which is our earthly world’s conjoined twin.  We are smitten with its beauty, terrified by its power, enticed by its mystery, greedy for its resources.  It has moved us to both poetry and piracy.  Let’s remember that ultimately we are utterly dependent on it for our lives, so it’s time - and long past time - to straighten out our relationship with Earth’s oceans.

[Pictures: Wave in the Rain, color woodcut by Henri Rivière, 1890 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

Tremendous Tidal Waves, illustration from The World Before the Creation of Man by Camille Flammarion, 1886 (Image from Project Gutenberg);

Rough, wood engraving by Merlyn Chesterman, 2021;

Odyssey, wood engraving by Molly Lemon, 2021;

Pandora’s Message Got Lost, wood engraving by Beth Robertson, 2021 (Last three images from The Society of Wood Engravers).]

Words of the Month - Vocabulary Tests

         With my children graduated from college last spring, this has been the first year in my entire life that has not been explicitly tied to the academic calendar, and I’m feeling slightly unmoored!  Still, the broader culture is certainly sufficiently affected by the academic calendar that I’m not in any danger of forgetting.  So in honor of all those students who still have a few weeks left in their school year, and are probably thinking about all their final projects and exams, here are a few Words of the Month.

project - Originally a “plan or scheme,” project entered English around 1400 from Medieval Latin meaning “something thrown forth.”  You can see how the sense could shift to “an undertaking.”  Interestingly, in the verb form (which came after the noun), the sense of “to plan, scheme” came before the various physical meanings “to shoot forth,” “to protrude,” “to cast an image on a screen,” etc.

test - In the late 14th century a test was a small vessel used in ascertaining the content or quality of metals.  The name of the vessel is ultimately from “shell.”  By the 16th century it could mean the “trial of the correctness or quality of something” more broadly, by the 18th century it could mean the “means of examining something,” but not until the very early 20th century did it gain its specifically academic sense.  (In general, the verb versions of these meanings followed behind the noun, often by about a century.)

exam - This is a mid-19th century slang shortening of examination.  In this case, the verb was first, appearing around 1300, from Latin meaning “to weigh,” and thus “to ponder, consider, and judge.”  The sense of “a test of knowledge” (as opposed to “a judicial inquiry”) dates to the early 17th century.

quiz - Since this began as slang, its origins are a little murky.  The meaning “a brief oral examination by a teacher” first appears in 1852.  The slang word quiz meaning “odd, ridiculous person” dates back to around 1780 (where we get the word quizzical), but it’s not entirely clear whether that’s the origin of the “test” meaning.  If so, the derivation is probably by way of “to make someone look ridiculous by means of puzzling questions,” which appeared by the end of the 18th century.  Another theory is that the test quiz derives from Latin qui es? (“who are you?”) which is said to be the first question in Latin oral exams in the 19th century.

essay - This comes from the same ultimate Latin root as exam, although in a different form.  Also, English acquired essay after it had spent a lot more time in French, and it may have been coined in English by Francis Bacon in the late 16th century, under the inspiration of Montaigne.  Bacon’s meaning “discursive literary composition” also had the sense of “trial, endeavor.”

assessment - This didn’t enter educational jargon until the mid-20th century.  Its first use in English was from around 1530, meaning “the value of property for tax purposes,” a meaning that remains.  It derives from Anglo-French assess, “to fix the amount of a tax, fine, etc,” from Latin for “sitting beside,” as in someone assisting a judge.  (And yes, assist is ultimately somewhat related to assess.)

evaluation - I’ll throw this onto my list of synonyms, although there’s nothing very exciting in its etymology.  It entered English from French in the mid 18th century, and simply means “to determine the value” of something.  The somewhat less concrete sense of assessing performance as opposed to tangible goods is later, and “job performance review” isn’t until the mid-20th century.

Lots of other synonyms for tests, such as finals, midterms, orals, etc, are all simply the adjectives that described various types of examinations.

        For anyone still dreading their exams, I wish you the best of luck.  Summer is almost here!

[Pictures: A Study, wood block print from Orbis Sensualium Pictus by John Comenius, translated by Hoole and printed for S. Leacroft, 1777 (Image from Google ebooks);

Detail of color wood block print by Walter Crane from The Absurd A.B.C., engraved and printed by Edmund Evans, c 1874 (Image from Internet Archive);

“Y was a Youth” alphabet from The Hobby-Horse, or the High Road to Learning, published by J. Harris and Son, 1820 (Images from A Nursery Companion by Iona and Peter Opie, 1980).]

Garwood's Wood Engravings

         Tirzah Garwood (UK, 1908-1951) was one of those artists whose work was overshadowed in the minds of art historians by the work of her artist husband.  If you want to see what I’ve shared of his work, you can revisit Eric Ravilious here.  But today let’s have a little sampling of Garwood’s wood engravings, which have a witty style all their own.

        First, here’s “The Wife,” a self portrait (made when Garwood was engaged to Ravilious) sitting up in bed beneath a picture of a house.  I like all the patterns and textures - the wallpaper!  that tablecloth! - the details of the architecture and furniture, and the young wife gazing somewhat enigmatically at the viewer.  This was part of a whole series on relationships.

        “Brick House Kitchen” is another with lots of texture, plus the added charm of a lot of cats and a large chicken.  It certainly looks like a cozy kitchen, if possibly a danger of fur and feathers in the food!  The technical skill of all those textures creating their varied effects is impressive.  I’m especially admiring the shading of the bricks at the side of the fireplace.

        For a subtle touch of the humor that marks many of Garwood’s depictions of people, notice how this baby has tossed their teddy bear overboard from the pram while the

nurse looks the other way.  How long before the loss will be noticed?  What adventures will Teddy have, perilously close to the road, before it’s reunited with the baby?

        And finally, another possible self-portrait in which the young woman looks away from the other travellers in the third class carriage, inviting us into her world despite her neutral expression.  Again, the details are masterful, from the view outside the window to the dozing men inside, and the careful depictions of clothing.  Garwood has other pieces depicting broader caricatures, or more riotous action, but I’ve chosen the ones I particularly like, which seem to be those that give me a chance to contemplate these places and people.

        Garwood and Ravilious were married for 12 years before he was lost at sea.  During that time she set aside much of her own work to help him with his - uncredited, of course.  She did get back into her own work (and eventually remarry), but she no longer did wood engraving, which I think is a real shame.  She died of cancer just shy of her 43rd birthday, so we’ll never know where her art might have gone if she’d had more time.  If you happen to find yourself south of London this weekend, you have a chance to see the first major exhibition of her work, showing at Dulwich Picture Gallery through May 26.  Alas, I won’t be there!  But it’s nice to see an excellent block printmaker with a distinctive style finally coming back into the public eye and getting her due.

[Pictures: The Wife, wood engraving by Tirzah Garwood, 1929 (Image from invaluable);

Brick House Kitchen, wood engraving by Garwood, 1932 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

The Grandchild, wood engraving by Garwood, c. 1928-9 (Image from invaluable);

The Train Journey, wood engraving by Garwood, c. 1928-30 (Image from invaluable).]

Plausible Impossibilities

         When telling stories, Aristotle wrote, it was better to include a probable impossibility than an unconvincing possibility.  Aristotle wasn’t much of a fan of spec fic and his advice may be intended to hold for all fiction, but for me its interest lies in its application to fantasy world creation.  It’s a strange and fascinating fact that when telling stories of impossible worlds, it is nevertheless the case that some things seem less impossible, more real, than others.  Why is this?  And how is an author to make sure their stories are “believable” even when no one really believes them?

        Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined an important phrase when he wrote that he wanted to endow his poems of the supernatural with “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”  Of course “suspension of disbelief” doesn’t mean that readers (or viewers of movies, or whatever) really believe in the fantastical things they’re being told in the same way that they believe in the world outside the story.  Rather, they’re agreeing to engage in the story’s exploration of What if?  Yes yes, we know there’s no such thing as ghost-crewed ships, faster-than-light space travel, or dragons, but what if there were?

        Even for that conditional suspension of disbelief, the author needs to make the impossibilities seem probable.  J.R.R. Tolkien pointed out that readers are not so much setting aside or suspending their disbelief, but rather putting together a secondary system of belief based on the presented reality of a secondary world.  Whatever impossible rules apply within a fictional world, they must be consistent so that they are internally plausible.  (This is why, for example, I don’t quibble with Aragorn’s kingship in The Lord of the Rings even though democracy is a better system of government.  I accept the truth within the story that Aragorn being put on the throne is the best outcome in that world.)

        But all this still leaves the question of how to do it?  How to make those impossibilities in that fictional world seem plausible enough that the audience willingly suspends their disbelief and constructs a solid secondary belief system?  There are a whole host of strategies, and authors can make the magic work in a variety of ways for a variety of effects.  Some things to consider…

        • Although breaking the laws of physics is really a simple binary (possible or impossible), in fact people respond to a sense of how much natural laws seem to be pushed.  It seems that it would be harder to levitate a building (or a crash-landed X-wing) than a toad, and harder to control a hurricane than a local breeze.  So don’t break laws carelessly; don’t defy reality gratuitously.  In the 1920’s Walt Disney introduced a revolutionary concept to animation when he made sure that his animators paid attention to the laws of physics in everything except their magic.  The water sloshes realistically in the buckets of marching brooms, if a dwarf trips his beard flies up just like that of a real man tripping in the real world, and even a flying elephant is realistically affected by the wind.  Even while tweaking one thing, an author can keep the rest of our webs of reality intact.

        • On the other hand, sometimes it’s necessary to distort a whole section of the web around the breach.  Even when considering the impossible, humans have a sense of the logic of what would make something possible.  That’s why we like our magical systems to follow rules and our sci fi to have quasi-scientific explanations.  Magic should come from ley lines, or from the original language of creation, or from angels or demons or Old Gods, or from something…  Space ships should fly because of warp drives, or ion drives, or infinite improbability drives, or something…  Depending on the context, those rules and explanations can be pretty vague or far-fetched, but the author still needs to manipulate enough of the world around the magic to give the audience a sense that it’s internally consistent and plausible within that world.  Sometimes it’s just window dressing, but it can make or break an illusion.

        • Like any good con, speculative fiction works best when you tell a story people want to believe.  That’s where all the sparkly bits of the story come in.  If it’s fun, or beautiful, or intriguing, or full of wonder, the audience will want to spend time there.  Of course people like stories with dragons, because dragons would be so cool!  Ditto exploring the universe, or saving the gnomes from oppression, or going to a school for wizardry, or finding love with a faerie prince…  Offer the audience invitations to suspend their disbelief, and situations they want to spend time considering.

        • In all the discussion of far-future technologies and the glittery laws of magic, people sometimes forget that the most important aspect of “realism” may have little to do with the magic and more to do with those fundamental aspects of what it means to be a person responding to the world and our relationships within it.  In other words, it’s easier to believe in a fairy godmother who reacts to her loved ones in a plausibly human way than to believe in a perfectly mundane woman who doesn’t.  A sensitively portrayed friendship between a space kraken and a moonfrog will ring more true than a sloppy and shallow portrayal of relationships between “normal” humans.  That’s Coleridge’s “human interest,” I think.  If the author tells what feels like the truth about the deepest things, we’ll happily accept most of the other stuff.

        What are some of your favorite plausible impossibilities?  Or what are some things or tropes that you can simply never suspend your disbelief about?

[Pictures: Full many shapes, that shadows were, wood engraving by Gustave Doré from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1877 (Image from Parigi Books);

Marching broom, still from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, 1940 (Image from Disney Fandom).

Quotation from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817.]

Strange Lands

         Today we’re back to block printing, and I’ve got a little collection of landscapes that bring some artistic license to the view.

        First is a cityscape by Luigi Spacal that positively revels in geometry.  There are suggestions of windows and possibly girders or overhead rails, but for the most part this could be a purely abstract collection of patterns - but then there’s a bicycle right there on the street (if that’s the street), in front of the eyeglasses of an optometrist’s shop (if that’s an optometrists’s shop).  I find the whole thing delightfully quirky and surprisingly cheerful.

        The second piece by Betty Sieler is, by contrast, serene and peaceful: a forest on a misty day.  The interesting thing about this one is that it’s amazing how clearly it represents tree trunks, because when you look closely it’s really just seemingly rough and random vertical lines.  The two colors of grey make it even more of a mushy mess, and yet simultaneously give it even more realistic depth.  This kind of art often seems like magic to me, when rough and simple carving coheres into a perfect evocation of a precise scene.

        The final piece, by Madeleine Flaschner, is even more abstract.  In fact, perhaps it isn’t even meant to be a landscape at all.  It’s simply titled “Composition,” so it could actually be purely abstract.  And yet my pattern-seeking eyes see a landscape here: sky at the top, high cliffs in the distance, perhaps water in the foreground, maybe some trees or plants at the sides…  It’s something of a sampler of different patterns and textures, and whatever it is, it’s dramatic!

        Three very different styles, three very different landscapes, and yet each of these three artists manages to evoke a scene that is simultaneously suggestive of the world and imaginative in strange and magical ways.  Which is your favorite?

[Pictures: City in the Night, woodcut by Luigi Spacal, 19702 (Image from 1stDibs);

Woodlands, linocut by Betty Sieler, 1962 (Image from Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art);

Composition, woodcut by Madeleine Flaschner, late 20th century (Image from 1stDibs).]

National Poetry Month

         April is National Poetry Month, but since April is also A to Z Blog Challenge month, that always takes precedence on this blog.  This year, however, I was especially active with National Poetry Month and I wanted to share a recap of some of that poetry goodness, even if belated.

        First of all, I had a number of duties as Poet Laureate of my town.

        1.  On April 13 I attended the opening celebration of a fresh new Poetry Walk at a local church.  They had solicited spring-themed haiku from members of their congregation, and they asked me to contribute some, as well.  They then made special lawn-sign flip-charts with the poems, and placed them throughout their small Memorial Garden, making a lovely, interactive way to engage with spring poetry among the flowers and emerging leaves.  (One of my poems that they used was my dandelion haiku.)

        2. On April 16 I led a Poetry-Writing Workshop at the Needham library.  We started with a few creativity warm-up exercises, and then went through three prompts, spending about 15 minutes on each, and sharing our efforts at the end of each.  The attendees were enthusiastic, willing to try whatever I threw at them, and came up with some excellent poetry.  (They especially impressed me with their tricubes!  That was a form I definitely struggled with, but some of them were able to use the form to advantage in really clever and effective ways.)

        3. On April 28 I gave a presentation for Great Poetry Reading Day for the town’s Council on Aging.  My assignment was to talk about myself and the role of Poet Laureate, and to read a few Great Poems.  I put my presentation together by interspersing the poems throughout the talk as illustrations of certain points in my explanation of the Poet Laureate role and how I got there.  This went over very well, and I ended by having the audience throw out their own favorite poems, which I then looked up and read aloud for them.  (To pull this post back a little more toward the fantasy theme of this blog, I’ll note that the poems I shared included the “Jabberwocky” and “The Listeners.”)

        All three of these sessions were pretty well-attended by the proverbial choir, so the preaching was very enjoyable!  But of course part of my job is to enlarge that choir and get poetry in front of more people who don’t necessarily already consider themselves poetry-lovers.  An activity that hopefully took a step in that direction actually took place outside of Poetry Month, on the first weekend of May.  During the annual Open Studios, I got 10 artists (including myself) to host Poetry Stations, in which they gave out copies of poems to everyone who visited them.  For the Poetry Stations I had selected 10 poems that were inspired by works of art, with a range of poets from Shelley to Yolen to myself, and a range of art from ancient to renaissance to modern.  I’m still trying to collect feedback on how much engagement that project got, but it included visitors who were very excited and were planning to collect all the poems, but also plenty of people who didn’t evince any interest at all!

        In addition to those official activities, I also had some more personal poetry activity during the month.  I was very pleased to have a poem accepted by Haiku Newton, which has printed poems for display.  (It makes me laugh, though, that it’s another spring-themed haiku.  Why does everyone always want spring-themed haiku?  Come on, people - there are other themes and there are other forms!)  For the kick-off all the poems are on display at the Newton library, but over the course of the year they’ll be placed in different areas throughout the city.

        The other thing I did was write a poem every day throughout the month of April.  I’ve never done that before and I enjoyed it very much, although some of the days were certainly more successful than others!  To be clear, only a few of them are what I would consider a finished, polished poem, and many of them will probably never be worth polishing up any further.  But the point was to do the exercise, and that was definitely a success.  Mostly I used the prompts from NaPoWriMo and Readers Digest Poem a Day, although on a few days I just followed an idea of my own.  Of the 30 poems (or, to be clear, poem drafts) about 8 were on fantasy themes, mostly fairy tales.

        I definitely want to keep up the momentum, although the first 8 days of May were so wildly busy for me that it would be more accurate to hope that I can get back the momentum before it gets too far behind me.  National Poetry Month turned out to be a good kick in the pants for my poetical activities, but I certainly don’t want poetry to be confined to just one month.

[Pictures: assorted photos of First Parish Poetry Walk,

Poetry Stations at Needham Open Studios,

Haiku Newton poetry signs, photos by AEGNydam, 2025.]

Reflections on an A to Z of Bittersweetness & Light

         Thanks for another great April A to Z, everyone!  Thanks to the A to Z organizers, and thanks to every one of you who stopped by to comment on my posts.  I enjoyed visiting quite a few of your blogs, too.  However, the last week of April was quite ridiculously busy for me — I had work hanging in 5 shows simultaneously this past weekend! — so my time to visit and comment fell off at the end.  I look forward to reading the last few letters on all my favorites in the next week.

        Some years I have a long final post into which I try to cram lots of extra goodies that didn’t fit into the alphabet, but this year all I really have to say by way of conclusion is to reiterate some of my main points from this year’s A to Z:

        • If you enjoy the work of any small-time indie artists, authors, musicians, etc., your support really makes a huge difference to us.  Word of mouth is always best, but any way you can help connect us with other people who might enjoy our work, you’re making a vital contribution to our ability to keep bringing our creations into the world.

        • The world is pretty stressful right now for a lot of very real reasons, but if you feel overwhelmed, remember that your distress is artificially exacerbated by media algorithms that amplify outrage, human negativity bias that disproportionately focusses on reasons for fear, and a culture of cynicism that portrays hope and love as naive, foolish, and unrealistic.  But you don’t have to accept that.  Bring a healthy dose of skepticism to your cynicism.  Keep your eyes open for the cooperation, love, and delight that really are everywhere.  And keep valiantly resisting those who try to tell you that hatred and lies are normal and inevitable.  Such people are terrified of the power of kindness and hope, so let those be your superpowers.

        • If you’re interested in my next book project, stay tuned for future announcements via my newsletter and this blog.  It’s going to be another collection of short stories, poems, and art, and they’ll all be inspired by, reflecting on, and reimagining stories from Greek mythology, European fairy tales, and other classic folklore.  I hope to have some big news about the project in July.

        Thanks again to everyone who made such supportive, encouraging comments about Bittersweetness & Light.  I appreciate you very much.

        Marketing Moral: Thank you!

        Proper Moral: A book doesn’t truly live until someone reads it.

[Bittersweetness & Light by Anne E.G. Nydam, 2025 (Learn more at NydamPrints.com)].

Z is for Zumil

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, and I’ve also been sharing some of the background on why we urgently need joyful stories.)

        Here’s the part in the story “The Home for Dispossessed Familiars” where we meet Zumil.  (I’ve added just a couple of inserts for context, where needed.)

        When Trudy arrived home from school on Thursday she found Colly [a crow] standing on the table, examining the papers Great Aunt Gert had sent.  The crow shuffled the top one aside with a claw, cocking her head from side to side as she scanned across the tattered pages.

        “Oh!  You can read?” Trudy exclaimed.  “Sorry, I guess I just assumed that because Grimalkin [a cat] said he couldn’t…”

        “Grimalkin is a heavy,” Colly replied, “I’m the scholarly type.”

        “I’m a man of action,” Grimalkin muttered from where he lay sprawled across the loveseat at the other end of the room.

        Trudy dropped her bag on the table and reached to pull out the chair.  She screamed as her hand touched something that was definitely not wood – something that squeezed out from under her palm and skittered into the shadows under the table.

        “What the…?”

        Colly hopped to the edge of the table and peered down.  “Are you okay, Zumil?  Come on out.”

        “What…?” Trudy repeated weakly, wondering how her life had so suddenly gotten so bizarre.

        A sharp nose poked up from the underside of the tabletop, vanished as the creature and Trudy startled each other again, and then slowly reemerged.  It crept up over the edge to the top of the table.

        Grimalkin jumped down from the loveseat, stretched, sauntered over, and hopped up onto the chair seat.  “Zumil,” he said, indicating the creature with a nod.  This new creature was a yellow-speckled lizard, long-nosed and long-tailed like an anole, but larger than any Trudy had ever seen.

        “A familiar, I presume?” she asked.

        The lizard bobbed his head.

        “And has his witch died recently?”

        Another nod.

        “Someone should probably be looking into the mortality rate of local witches.”

        I wrote this story after realizing, to my astonishment, that I’d actually never written a short story that included familiars or similar animal companions.  This was a great surprise to me because I’d included animal companions in all of my novels, and just assumed that of course I must have written stories about them… But I hadn’t, so I went back to basics and started with your classic witches’ familiars.  But the twist is that they’re gathering at the home of a woman who is not a witch, has no desire to be a witch, and doesn’t even know what to do with them all!  And of course it ends up being another story about cooperation, compassion, and caring for each other.

        Marketing Moral: We end where we began: Buy my Book!  If this series of posts has enticed you to the point where you actually wish to have your very own copy the book, it’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or straight from me.

        Proper Moral: Divided we fall, which is why repressive governments work so hard to sow distrust and divide people from each other.  However, as long as we refuse to stop caring for each other, we cannot be truly defeated.  (Also, a friend in need is a friend indeed.)

        If you could have a magical familiar, what animal would you choose?

[Picture: Anole, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]