What's Up - July-August Edition

         It’s another of those posts where I tell you what I’m up to and how to get involved.  This weekend I’ll be at Readercon, “the Conference on Imaginative Literature.”  Readercon doesn’t have an art show, but I’ll be doing my other usual con activities: readings, panels, and taking shifts in the dealers room at the Broad Universe table.  I’ll be participating on the following panels:

• The Purposes of Memorable Insults in Sci-Fi and Fantasy (My interest in this topic is primarily one of world-building, and secondarily character-building.  Thirdly, of course, snappy insults can simply be fun!  See my post Of Vandals and Villains for some examples of how insults reveal culture in the history of English, and Not Quite There for some insults that amuse me.)

• How to Fight a Fairy Tale: Retellings (Regarding which, see my recent post Fairy Tale Retellings, plus Fantasy Picture Books of Note which includes a few more fairy tale retellings, and also Happy Birthday, Fairy Tales! on the basics, Some Favorite Fairy Tales which discusses the elements I love in these stories, The Beast which looks at the varied visual interpretations of that character, and Baba Yaga Village for my own visual “retelling” of a fairy tale.)

• Cartography and the Imagination (I’ve been on similar panels at other conventions in the past and I always love this stuff!  You can see all my previous posts tagged for maps here, but especially Mapping the Fantastic for how I organize my thoughts on the use of maps in spec fic, and Cartography for my overview of the topic.)

        The other thing that’s up is quite literal: my solo show “Poems and Prints” is now up at Gorse Mill Gallery in Needham.  Roughly 30 of my relief block prints are paired with the poems they illustrate — in some cases famous poems by the likes of Shakespeare, Poe, de la Mare, and nursery rhymes, and in other cases my own poems.  Given that poetry is so rich in powerful imagery, it’s not surprising that art and poetry should have such a close relationship, and given my own love of poetry, it’s only natural that I should be influenced and inspired by it when thinking of ideas for block prints.  I have done shows before with the theme of “stories,” but this is the first time I’ve focussed explicitly on poetry, and the first time I’ve actually paired the source literature with each piece.

        When I’ve done solo shows in the past I’ve very seldom held a reception because an introvert like me can’t believe that many people would actually come, and what’s the point anyway if you don’t particularly relish small-talk chit-chat?  However, for this exhibit I’m determined to push myself and I’m actually offering three (count them, 3) special events.  If you’re local, please consider yourself cordially invited to any or all of the following:

    August 3 at 4:00 - Reception

    August 14 at 3:30 - Poetry Workshop

    August 26 at 3:30 - Printmaking Demo and Workshop

        I’m really hoping to reach some new folks with this show, and share the joys of block printing and poetry: two great tastes that taste great together.

[Pictures: Views of “Poems and Prints” on display at Gorse Mill Gallery, photos by AEGNydam, 2025;

Poster for the show, including Nevermore, rubber block print by AEGNydam (Image at NydamPrints.com).]

City Scenes by Troy

         Today’s block prints are by Adrian Troy (UK/USA, 1901-1977).  I could find little biography for him, other than that he was born in England, went to high school in France, made prints for the WPA in the US, and taught wood engraving in Chicago.  Of course I’d like to know a little more about him, but as usual in these cases, I just have to look at the art on its own.  This first piece is the one that got me interested in Troy, and it’s my favorite that I’ve found.  I love the interesting perspective, as if perhaps we’re in an upper story of the building across the street.  I love the slightly wobbly lines of the architecture, making the whole thing quirky and whimsical.  There are also all kinds of hints at untold stories here: the building is quite fancy with a pediment and a name, and handsome architectural details around the windows, but it has a “For Rent” sign as if perhaps it’s come down in the world.  The two people calling back and forth to each other from the street to the third floor must have something going on between them.  The shadow across the front of the building and in the alley by the fire hydrant hint of further atmosphere.

        Next is a busy scene of a produce market.  There are men with trucks and barrows, women and children, a garage and gas pump, warehouses and crates, trash cans and a trolley car…  There’s some interesting stuff going on with the view, like the juxtaposition of different perspectives as if this is more of a montage of scenes than a single view.  There’s also a sort of cutaway on the Garage roof, so that we can see the trucks parked inside.  This simultaneously seems like a very real and specific place (“South State St. Market” at the corner of S. State St. and 69th St.), while also being an impressionistic version of it.

        The final piece shows bricklayers at work for a WPA project, and it comes from a series on road-building.  I don’t quite like how very blank the men’s faces are, but I love everything else, from the balance of black-white-and-texture, to the details of the manhole cover and the tools, to the positions and jackets of the workers.  I also really love the mini silhouette view and carved title at the bottom.

        All of these scenes have such specificity that they must be real places.  The info given with the scene of the market does say it’s in Chicago, so my assumption is that the others are, as well.

        For some additional related block print viewing pleasure, if you want an overview of the WPA program, read my post WPA Printmaking.  If you like the busy cityscape of the second piece, check out Christopher Hutsul’s Cityscapes.  If you want to see a couple different examples of block prints that play with perspective to combine more views into a single scene, try Leopoldo Méndez at Working, and Gwenda Morgan at Morgan’s World.

[Pictures: 4117 Wentworth Avenue, woodcut by Adrian Troy, 1935/42 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

The Produce Market/South State Street Market, woodcut by Troy, 1935/40 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Brick-Laying, woodcut by Adrian Troy, 1935/37 (Image from Art Institute Chicago).]

Fairy Tale Retellings

         I’m scheduled to be on a panel about fairy tale retellings at the Readercon Conference on Imaginative Literature later this month, plus I’ve been hard at work on my own collection of fairy tale and mythology-inspired stories, poems, and art, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently.  Perhaps the first thing to get straight is that I’m thinking about “retellings” quite broadly.  We can start, however, with retellings that stick pretty closely to the source tale while simply adding more detail.  One of the all-time greats in that category is Robin McKinley’s Beauty, based on Beauty and the Beast.  Thorn by Instisar Khanani is a retelling of The Goose Girl that also falls into this category.  It can be hard to do a very straightforward retelling well, in part because it’s boring if it doesn’t feel like anything new is added, and in part because fairy tales often don’t quite make sense without adding in sizeable chunks of new plot and character to explain why things happen the way they do.

        Which brings us to retellings that put enough of a twist on the story to give us believable reasons.  Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted is a good example, in which Cinderella is given a magical explanation for her extreme obedience.  Two retellings of Scheherazade also give more powerful explanations for the sultan’s murderous rampage: The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh and A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston.

        Moving even farther from the source, a story can be retold from a different, unconventional point of view, for the purpose of highlighting different elements, or even allowing some parts of the story to be completely reinterpreted.  Sleeping Beauty’s little sister gives us a new story in E.D. Baker’s The Wide-Awake Princess, Robin Hood’s daughter gives us new legends in Rowan Hood by Nancy Springer, and we get a sideways view of Scheherazade from a servant in Susan Fletcher’s Shadow Spinner.  Marilyn Singer has written two books of "reverso" fairy tales poems, in which each set of poems gives the same story from two opposite points of view.  This idea of exploring well-known tales from a new point of view can work very well, although it can also be loathed by readers who feel that the source material wasn’t respected, or that the new version doesn’t seem plausible or natural to the story.

        Extreme reader reactions can also be elicited when an author turns the whole thing upside down, as in Disney’s recent crop of fairy tale villain back-stories.  It’s often either love or hate, and I confess that I often hate these… and yet I’ve also written a number of them myself.  It takes skill and delicacy to do it well, but I think it also takes the luck of landing in the hands of a reader who’s receptive to the concept.

        Sometimes the line can be blurry between this category and those “retellings” in which the original story is really just a jumping-off point to head in a whole new direction.  The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson and The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame are both certainly based on the traditional folklore of St George and the Dragon, but are they retellings, riffs, satires, or merely vaguely “inspired by?”  Roshani Chokshi’s Once More Upon a Time begins with The Twelve Dancing Princesses, but doesn’t retell any part of the actual story, instead taking us forward after the fairy tale ends.  Tamsyn Muir’s Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower clearly begins with a Rapunzel-like set-up, but the fact that her princess has a completely different name is a clue that this is probably a step beyond even a broad definition of “retelling” and possibly just counts as using general fairy tale tropes.

        Then there’s Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, in which a version of Sleeping Beauty is used as a metaphor for an experience of the Holocaust, and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, in which Cinderella becomes a cyborg mechanic amid sci fi political intrigue.

        All this variation and breadth in fairy tale retellings helps illustrate just how popular, powerful, and resonant these stories are, sticking with us generation after generation…  Which is why I, too, have been creating so many fairy-tale-inspired short stories, poems, and art that I’m putting together a collection.  I expect to launch a Kickstarter campaign in September, and if you’re interested, feel free to fill out my short questionnaire here, and give me some feedback about what book details and backer rewards you’d like to see me incorporate into my project.

        Also, of all the books I’ve mentioned today, I like some better than others.  My absolute favorites are McKinley and Chokshi (and my least favorite is Muir).  You can find slightly longer reviews of a few of the books in these previous posts:

    Scheherazade Retold (Fletcher, Ahdieh, Johnston)

    Reading the Old to the Young (Grahame)

    Books for Hope (Chokshi)

    Reverso Fairy Tales (Singer)

[Picture: Beyond the Thorns, rubber block print (two blocks) by AEGN, 2017 (sold out);

Apotropaic, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

The Fire of Independence

         Twelve score and nine years ago there was brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great struggle, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  It certainly makes Independence Day this year feel simultaneously cruelly ironic as well as poignantly precious.  But in this blog I look at everything through the lens of block prints, so here’s what I’ve got…

        Howard Cook (USA, 1901-1980) made two versions of his linoleum cut celebrating July Fourth.  Children dance and scamper about among fireworks and sparklers, but one version includes four colors ranging from yellow, through orange, into brown, while the second version is just the single darkest layer, this time printed in black.  (It could be a reduction print, such that the black and white version is all that’s left of the block by the time the other successive layers have been carved away, but it’s also possible that they’re separate blocks.)  At any rate, what I love about the color version is that the children hold stars in their hands, which is such a beautiful image.  On the other hand, I confess that so much fiery color right there on the ground around the children feels scary to me.  Even though you can actually see the smiles on a couple of the faces, my mind all too easily leaps to bombs and disaster.  In that regard the black and white version seems a little less intense, since the fireworks appear to be a little more up in the sky.

        I also wanted to include this wonderful Japanese wood block print that isn’t about the United States holiday at all.  It’s by Gakutei (Japan, 1786?-1868) and shows the Tenjin Festival in Osaka, which is held on July 24-25.  This wood block print also includes people gathered to celebrate with fire and lights, parades and festivities, and it evokes much of the feel of July Fourth for me.  Including it here today also speaks to my strong belief that the United States has grown and improved in the past 250 years precisely to the extent that it has expanded its view of who is actually embraced by that promise that everyone is endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  When we refuse to see the contributions of some, we deny ourselves our greatest strength, and when we roll back liberty and justice for some, we destroy the very foundations that I, for one, will be celebrating this week as I watch the fireworks with my neighbors from all different backgrounds, each of whom brings something important to my community.

[Pictures: July Fourth, linoleum cuts by Howard Cook, 1950 (Images from Smithsonian American Art Museum);

The Tenman Shrine Festival in Osaka, color woodcut by Gakutei, c. 1833-4 (Image from Philadelphia Museum of Art.]

Words of the Month - Most Beautiful Words

         Beauty being in the ear of the be-hearer, any arguments about the most beautiful words in the language are going to be purely subjective.  When I say “in the language,” of course I mean any given language, but since different languages have different phonetic systems, their speakers are bound to have different judgements about what sounds the most mellifluous.  I will say that one of my favorite words is the Spanish el tenedor, which I consider to be noble and heroic-sounding.  My favorite word in German may be zurück, which is fun to say, like whipping around a pole on ice skates.

        Focussing on English, however, many writers and linguists have put forth their opinions about the most beautiful words in our language.  These include tremulous, murmuring, radiance, ephemeral, mellifluous itself, and the famous cellar door.  Linguist David Crystal put together a matrix of ten criteria that he claimed contributed to a word’s auditory appeal.  These include: 3 syllables, with the stress on the first, use of m and l, and avoidance of certain consonants (such as h, g, j, ch, sh, th).  Crystal ranked tremulous on top, but also gave an example of a word that failed on every one of his criteria: zoo.  I disagree that this word is particularly displeasing.  It may not be pretty, but it’s hardly ugly, either.  (For the ugliest word in the English language I have to nominate puberty.)  It’s also worth noting that some words that may not be beautiful, are nonetheless delightful to say, such as kerfuffle, nincompoop, gargantuan, and grinch.

        The other point about beauty is that even if we frame this as being a purely aesthetic question, people find it almost impossible to ignore the meanings of words.  For that reason, most of the words on these lists have positive meanings to reinforce their positive sounds.  Cellar door is more neutral than most, and one of the few truly negative-meaning words that made one list is nefarious.  Demonstrating this even more strongly, according to a 2004 survey conducted by The British Council (among non-English speakers, interestingly) the most beautiful word in English is mother.  Mother is certainly a wonderful concept, but I can’t say I find the sound of the word particularly euphonious.

        So what are my choices of euphonious words?  At the top of my list has long been clarity.  Although Crystal might claim that the hard c and t disqualify it, my own opinion is that their sharpness adds a little sparkle that’s more pleasing than the undifferentiated blandness of something like murmuring.  (That may also explain the appeal of a nonsense word that has currency in our family: skibbledee.   Although perhaps that belongs more on the list of fun words than truly beautiful words.)  I do also like cellar door and ephemeral that have been mentioned already.

        This question at its most basic is simply an entertaining novelty.  As a poet, however, the sounds of words can be just as important as their meanings, and picking the right words definitely includes consideration of their syllables, stresses, and sounds.  That’s why I love it so much that English has so many synonyms, allowing me to rummage through all sorts of varied options when arranging words into a poem.

        What words do you consider to be the most beautiful?  Do you have certain sounds that you love (or hate)?  How much does the meaning influence you?  Do share your favorites!

[Picture: El Tenedor, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2023 (Image from NydamPrints.com);

Closing Doors, reduction linocut by Lori Biwer Stewart (Image from the artist’s Etsy shop Lori.Biwer.Stewart.)]

What’s Black and White and Green?

         First, to celebrate “Black and White” - It’s our Blogiversary!  Fifteen years ago I started blogging, and in 1,507 posts so far I’ve shared my thoughts, theories, and enthusiasm for relief block prints and speculative fiction, and of course Words of the Month.  My audience is small, and I’m really not much of a social media type, but I’ve appreciated the opportunity to connect with the folks who have found this blog over the years.  If you’re reading this, thanks for being here with me!

        In the past few years I’ve been posting a little less frequently, and I’ll admit that sometimes I really don’t have time for this.  But even though sometimes it feels like a chore, there are other times when I still really enjoy it.  So perhaps I’ll be scaling back my posts still further - but on the other hand, who knows?  I probably wouldn’t have guessed 15 years ago that I’d still be doing this now.

        In addition to Black and White’s fifteenth birthday, another item to celebrate today is the publication of another poem.  “The Green Girl Thinks of Home” just came out in the Summer 2025 issue of New Myths, and you can read it (plus the rest of the contents) here.  I hope you enjoy my poem - but it will help if you know about the legend of the Green Children…

        The character of the Green Girl comes from a folk tale from Suffolk in the East of England.  Some time in the 12th century two mysterious, green-skinned children were found near the town of Woolpit.  The brother and sister spoke an unknown language, were dressed in unfamiliar style,  and could eat no normal food except broad beans.  The boy soon died, but the girl eventually learned English and explained that she came from a land that was always in twilight.  While watching cattle in this green, twilit land, the children entered a cave, and following the sound of church bells, at length they emerged in England.

        Of course the motif of entering another world through a cave is a very common one in folklore, but it’s interesting that this time we are the strange other world.  Folklorists have come up with various explanations and interpretations: tales of aliens ranging from faeries to indigenous Britons to Flemish settlers to extra-terrestrials… or tales of ancient harvest rituals or metaphors of death and rebirth, or perhaps garbled tales of some historical event such as a kidnapping, arsenical poisoning, or hypochromic anemia…  According to the story, the Green Girl learned to eat other foods, was given a job as a maid, and eventually married.  I don’t know whether she had children.  A number of other writers have explored the story in various ways, but for me the interesting part is the defamiliarization of what our world would seem like to someone who had known only twilight.

        The idea for the poem and a first draft date back a long time, probably some 35 years.  But relatively recently when I started getting back into writing and submitting poetry, I came back to it and reworked it considerably.  However, the basic idea has stayed the same: everyone always says that enduring the “troughs” of experience is worth it in order to enjoy the “peaks” — but what if it’s better not to have any extremes at all?  Certainly someone from a land of perpetual twilight might think so.  What do you think?

        My illustration is a rubber block print that didn’t really turn out as I’d hoped.  I used the bad rubber and I had such a tough time with the printing that I don’t know whether I’ll even bother making an entire edition of originals for sale.  But I wanted to illustrate the poem because TEASER ALERT: I expect to include it in my next collection of stories, poems, and art, which now has the working title Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns.  Stay tuned for exciting updates in the coming months!

[Picture: “Then the Magic Happened,”cover art by Paula Hammond for New Myths Vol. 19, Issue 71, Summer 2025 (Image from NewMyths.com);

Green Girl at Twilight, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025.]

Pollinator Week

         It’s Pollinator Week, so let’s celebrate with block prints of some of our world’s wonderful pollinators.  I’ll start right off with a bang with this beautiful, bright image of a variety of bees and butterflies visiting a variety of flowers.  This piece by Kate Heiss took seven blocks and is full of summery color.  Butterflies are particularly beloved, being beautiful and gentle.  They are often considered symbolic of the soul and of rebirth.  How fitting, then, that their pollination helps ensure the rebirth of the plants they visit.  If you want to support butterflies, you should grow not only the flowers they pollinate, but also the plants on which they lay their eggs (such as milkweed for monarchs.)

        Another piece by Heiss, using only one block, shows a wonderful graphic quality.  This one reminds us of the incredible importance of bees for pollination.  It shows sunflowers (with wonderful patterns) in the foreground, while the background shows a cultivated field.  Scientists estimate that about a third of the food we eat (as many as three quarters of the different crop species) are dependent on pollination by bees.  So yes, you should be concerned that many species of bees are in serious decline.  Please lay off the pesticides in your yard, for the sake of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators - and for the sake of the humans who like

to eat the food they pollinate!

        Up next is a pollinator from the Americas that everyone loves: the hummingbird.  Each block of this two-block linocut by Alynn Guerra is printed with a color gradation for a fiery red palette that any hummingbird would love.  Where I live we get only one species of hummingbird, and they always seem like a wonderful gift.  Where there are many species you can see the evidence of co-evolution between the flowers and the hummingbirds’ bills.

        A less well-known pollinator is the bat, mostly the fruit-eating bats of tropical and desert areas.  (All the bats in my area are insect-eaters.)  Still, over 500 species of plants rely on bats, including bananas and mangos, so don’t underestimate their services to flowering plants.  Here’s a two-layer reduction linocut by Emīls Salmiņš, showing three bats feasting on the berries that probably wouldn’t even be there without the bats’ pollination.

        And finally, here’s one of my own rubber block prints, featuring another night-time pollinator: the moth.  A study in 2023 found that moths were actually more efficient pollinators than bees, carrying more pollen, and visiting a wider variety of species.  On the other hand, they pollinate fewer vital food crops.  A number of our beloved flowers are pollinated by moths, though, including morning glories, honeysuckle, monarda, and evening primrose.

        In addition, wasps, flies, beetles, other birds, and small mammals can also provide flowering plants with that vital pollination.  Never forget that nature is a wildly complex, interconnected, finely tuned machine, and every time we mess up part of it (like using all those pesticides on foods crops - or your lawn), we cause unintended and sometimes disastrous consequences.  Pollinator Week is a reminder that we need to protect these creatures, both the beautiful beloved ones and the less flashy ones.  And of course it’s also a good excuse for block prints.  (To see the collection of pollinators I posted way back in 2013, see that Pollinator Week post.)

[Pictures: Poppies and Pollinators, linocut by Kate Heiss (Image from VK Gallery);

Sunflower and Bees, linocut by Heiss (Image from VK Gallery);

Hummingbird, linocut print by Alynn Guerra (Image from Red Hydrant Press);

Bats, linocut reduction print by Emīls Salmiņš (Image from Two Lovers Printmaking);

Wee Hours, rubber block print by AEGNydam (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

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.  On the other hand, carving black words on a white background, as in the title, is much more difficult.  Also, 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.]