Tribute to Jane Yolen

         Jane Yolen (USA, 1939-2026) was a giant in the world of speculative fiction, children’s books, and poetry.  She was the author or editor of over 450 books, including winners of the Caldecott Medal (Owl Moon), Nebula Award (Lost Girls), Locus Award (Pay the Piper), and World Fantasy Award (The Emerald Circus), plus she received a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.  I can’t add anything substantive to the recent articles celebrating her work, but I do want to acknowledge her life.

        In 2021 I was on a Poetry Reading panel with Yolen during the Boskone convention, and I was absolutely thrilled to be rubbing shoulders with some towering figures.  (Not just Jane Yolen - just look at this line-up!)  We had an absolute blast, making up silly little verses together as we waited for the panel to begin, admiring each other’s poems, and enjoying the great audience, as well.  Being in February of 2021, however, this convention was held on-line.  Afterwards I had a brief email correspondence with Yolen and then in subsequent years a couple of brief conversations with her at other (in-person) cons, mostly on the topic of Quakerism, which she had for a while been involved with.  In all of this she was gregarious, encouraging, and with a fun sense of humor.  I very much appreciated meeting her.

        Of course a blog about fantasy, with a special focus on juvenile fantasy, could hardly run for very long without mentioning some of Jane Yolen’s books.  Here are some prior posts in which I mentioned works of hers.

Fairy Tale Retellings (Briar Rose)

Feminist Fantasy Picture Books (Not One Damsel in Distress)

Monsters and Aliens (“The Giraft”)

Dinosaur Fantasy (How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?)

        On a seemingly unrelated note, in 2025 I did a Poet Laureate collaboration with Needham Open Studios in which I recruited artists to host Poetry Stations where visitors could collect ekphrastic poems: poems written in response to and about works of visual art.  The strange coincidence is that among the 10 poems I chose to be distributed, one was by Jane Yolen while another was a poem of my own inspired by a painting by David Hockney, who also happened to die on June 11, 2026.  I include them both here. (Don't forget you can click on the picture to make them big enough to read.)

        Jane Yolen will certainly be missed, but she leaves a huge legacy of thoughtful, sometimes funny, sometimes powerful, imaginative work for all ages.

[Pictures: Boskone58 program details, 2021, illustration by Julie Dillon;

“Grant Wood: American Gothic,” poem by Jane Yolen from Heart to Heart, ed. Greenberg, 2001; American Gothic, painting by Grant Wood, 1930 (Image from Art Institute of Chicago);

“Remembering Dreams,” poem by AEGNydam, 2025; Garrowby Hill, painting by David Hockney, 1998 (Image from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).]

S is for Shabti

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my brand-sparkly-new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        For S we’re going into the “Other” category for a poem inspired by the mythology of ancient Egyptian funerary practices.  So, you’re going to live forever in an afterlife that’s really pretty much exactly like this life.  In other words, all the work still needs to be done – and who wants to spend an eternal afterlife doing the chores?  That’s where the shabti comes in.

        A shabti (sometimes also called ushabti or shawabti) is a model figurine of a person, inscribed with magical spells so that when called upon in the afterlife, it will step up and do all the required work, leaving its master to “live” an afterlife of leisure.  The people of the highest wealth and status might include dozens or even hundreds of shabtis in their tombs to make sure they were properly served.  For me the idea of shabtis, like all those stories about beings created for the sole purpose of serving their masters, raises the question of how they feel about this situation.

     For a long time I waited, silent in the sand.

     Feet planted, arms crossed, silent in my row.

     For a long time I waited to respond to the command.

     All was stillness, all was darkness, unvarying and slow.

 

     For a long time I waited, patient for the call

     To plow, to clear obstructions, to carry stones or sand.

     For a long time I waited, my obedience a scrawl

     Of symbols down my legs: my statement and my stand.

 

     “I am here; I answer,” my painted spell declares,

     To the master in whose likeness I am made.

     All around me in the darkness are my master’s painted prayers…

     But his heart has not returned from being weighed.

        Once again I have given you here only half the poem, in an unabashedly unsubtle attempt to entice you to want to read more, thus having to purchase a copy of Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns for yourself.  And in case you need further enticement, But wait!

There’s more!  S is also for Scheherazade, about whom you can read the poem which I posted here.  (Plus, you can read about some other authors’ Scheherazade retellings at this post.)  And S is also for Siren.  I’ve got a short story and a poem about sirens in my book, but in this prior post on The Lure of Sirens you can read all about the varied ways sirens have been depicted in art from ancient Greece up to my own rubber block print (which is in the book - in three variations, no less!)

        The moral of shabtis is that although humans never stop trying to figure out ways to make someone else do the work for them, enslaving another sentient being is never okay.

        However, if you persist in making shabtis despite Moral #1, it’s worth it to pay a little extra for a scribe with clear handwriting, lest you end up with garbled spells and malfunctioning shabtis for all eternity.

  The ancient Egyptians tended to pack for the afterlife like going to a deserted island, so I’ll go with that classic question: what three things would you take?

[Picture: Shabti, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com),

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

R is for Rapunzel

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my brand-sparkly-new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore, which is released TODAY!  If you wish to rush right out and procure a copy of your very own, it’s now available from the usual on-line behemoth, or from the distributor IngramSpark, or contact me if you want your copies signed or accompanied by anything else from my web site.)

        Like many fairy tales, “Rapunzel” includes sex and violence, trauma and healing, and lots of very odd things without always much in the way of reasonable explanation.  (If you’re only familiar with Disney’s version “Tangled,” you should definitely read the original here.)  So again, there are lots of interesting places one could go with this story (and indeed, Disney’s version is an interesting re-imagining in its own right)  but for me, it started to dawn on me that every part of Rapunzel’s story could be looked at through a botanical lens.  She’s even named for a salad!  And I began to imagine that eventually, after her long and happy life with her prince and their twins, she would die and be buried, and her long Rapunzel hair, still botanical, would become a sort of mycelial network.  Here’s how the poem starts…

     The salad the mother craved became

     The nascent infant in the nourished womb.

     The garden the father robbed became

     The nursery in which she grew.

     The tower the sorceress built became

     A tree of stone, as tall and straight

     As the surrounding pines, and she, Rapunzel,

     Spirit locked within that rocky trunk, became

     Its dryad.

     Her hair, like aerial roots, became

     A pathway for the witch,

     And then the man.

     The thorns in which she fell became

     The heartwood spine of a woman

     Pruned from her mother’s arms,

     Cast out from her walled garden,

     Uprooted from her spirit tree.

     Self-sown in the wilderness, she became

     A wildflower, a weed,

     Until her very tears were healing sap…

        Being coy, I haven’t included the whole poem, despite the spoiler in my explanation and illustration.  I still want to tease you a little - after all, the book is released today!

        I had a very good time designing and carving all the little details of the rubber block print illustration, but it is a rather unusual subject for me.  I printed a somewhat smaller edition of the originals than usual because I wasn’t at all sure whether people would want to buy this and hang it up in their home.  But it turns out that some people do really love it, and there’s only one left available for sale.  I guess I’m so used to being an oddball that I’m not always very good at knowing whether or not other people will share my particular oddball sensibilities – although in this case I am probably actually less attracted to the macabre than the average.  *shrug*  In any case, the larger plant growing in the middle is an attempt at what the actual herb rapunzel looks like (Campanula rapunculus.  Admittedly, no one knows with 100%

certainty what herb was referred to in the fairy tale because of the variability of common names of plants, but this is the best guess.)

        The moral of Rapunzel is that you are what your mother eats, apparently.

        But also, don’t be too uptight; why not let your hair down sometimes?

        What’s the longest you’ve ever grown your hair?  (And yes, beards count too, in case ZZ Top is reading my blog.)  And how do you feel about macabre art, decor, or fashion?

[Picture: The Herb Rapunzel, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

O is for Owl

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        Today’s poem is inspired by one of the slightly less famous fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.  “Jorinde and Joringel” is another of those tales with a dreamlike, evocative setting and atmosphere which has always enchanted me.  If you don’t know this one (or need a reminder), you can read it here.  (I also mentioned the story here in my 2024 A to Z on the Botany of the Realms of Imagination.)  The owl is the story’s wicked witch and I think there’s something interesting about an owl-shifting witch transforming her female victims into birds.  Perhaps her avian misery loves company?  Or perhaps she actually thinks she’s helping them by making them into a superior form?  There are definitely some seeds for retellings and re-imaginings in this…  But for my poem I didn’t twist or change anything about the story itself.  Instead I sank deeper into it, imagining what it would really feel like to have experienced that transformation and imprisonment.  My poem begins

We have children grown now, with children of their own.

We have had joy together many years now, he and I.

I remember now that day’s late sunlight, slanting between leaves,

The strange beauty that pierced us, our joy in a minor key,

Until suddenly the castle walls loomed from the weird shadows

And the owl came circling three times with its nightfall wings.

 

As my soft voice became song, and my body wings,

My mind, too, shifted, slipped away, no longer my own.

My self was lost in the song, feathered in shadows,

And all I knew became the nightingale.  I

Beat against the cage, as she carried me from my key -

His heart - left locked behind us among the darkening leaves.

 

Then I remembered neither speech nor hands, neither sky nor leaves,

Only wings in a wicker cage, which are no wings.

And in my nightingale mind only one fragile key

With which to keep locked the center of my own 

Identity: the certainty that I could sing, that I

With song could claim space against shackles and shadows. 

        The poem is a sestina, a form that has seven stanzas, each with 6 lines (except the final stanza, with 3), ending with the same 6 words arranged in a different order each time.  I really enjoy this form, and its length gives it enough room to put roots down into a story.  If you want to read my whole poem, it was first published in Strange Horizons and you can find it here.  (Also mentioned in this prior post Okapis and Nightingales, but there isn’t really much additional info there.)

        As for the owl, the moral she gives in this story is not to be out in the forest past sunset.  But also, owls are an interesting case study in folklore and mythology because almost everyone seems to think there’s something very significant about them, but that significance can span the full range of good and evil.  Perhaps there’s a moral somewhere in there about not projecting your own preoccupations onto the neutral natural world!

        On the other hand, we’re here for the folklore, so feel free to let me know: uncanny or cuddly, sinister or wise?  How do you feel about owls?

[Picture: Illustration for Jorinde Remembers, collage of elements from two rubber block prints by AEGNydam, 2026 (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]

L is for Landscape with Lisa

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore, being released on April 20.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.  As for the other intrepid bloggers of the A to Z Challenge, be sure to check them out at the Master List.)

        Most of the stories that inspired pieces in my book are old: as ancient as the Bible or Greek mythology, or at least the fairy tales collected in the nineteenth century, many of which come from much older roots.  But some of the folklore in my “Other” category is a little more recent.  Take the Mona Lisa, for example.  She was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early sixteenth century, but she didn’t really become legend until the twentieth century.  Her fame was launched by her 1911 theft and eventual recovery, after which her mysterious smile and her astronomical monetary value turned her into arguably the most legendary work of art in the world.  So why shouldn’t I try my hand at imagining what’s behind that smile?  Here’s the beginning of my poem.

    The Mona Lisa never used to smile.

    She used to watch the landscape through the haze,

    And muse on wars fought over dream-bald peaks.

    She used to wonder that the paleworn road

    Wound always bare between the craggy rocks.

    She used to worry that the farmers' crops

    Were withering on the barren, dusty earth.

    She used to wince beneath the bruise-green sky,

    Forever heavy as before a storm…

        My block print version of the Mona Lisa is quite small, just a couple inches tall, and it’s a reduction print.  For me the interesting challenge wasn’t to try to copy the painting exactly (because we already have the original for that), but to play with simplifying it.  A reduction print is done with a single block that’s carved multiple times (in this case, just twice).  First I carved out everything that remains white, and printed with brown.  Then I carved the same block further, removing all the areas that remain brown, and printing on

top with black.  I find reduction prints to be a fun intellectual puzzle as well as an aesthetic one, although just two layers is trivial as these things go.  (If you're curious about reduction printing, you can see a more detailed process description in my posts Work in Progress - Reduction and Completed Reduction Print.)

        The moral of the Mona Lisa is that no one can resist an air of mystery.

        Therefore, keep ‘em guessing!

        Have you ever been to the Louvre and seen the Mona Lisa in person?  If so, were you impressed or underwhelmed?  And also, what’s your theory about her smile?

[Picture: La Giocondetta, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2023 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

J is for Judgement

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        The Judgement of Solomon is one of the most famous ancient stories of wisdom, but in case you’re not familiar with it, you can read it here.  It’s also the inspiration for one of the earliest pieces in my book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns.  This one is actually a series of 5 poems, each from the point of view of a different character, and it’s probably one of my earlier attempts to imagine a myth from a genuinely human perspective, trying to feel the people not as stock characters merely fulfilling a role, but as humans living an actual experience.  The characters I chose are Solomon and the two women, of course, but also the infant himself, and the fifth character who’s merely implied: the swordsman ordered to divide the child.  How would you feel if you received such an order?  Here’s just a snippet of the swordsman’s poem:

     Well, I've squandered blood before,

     And laughed at the coppery smell, and sung

     At the deaths of my foes.  But a child?

        The illustration paired with these poems was not made to go with it.  It’s actually a self portrait with one of my own babies.  I titled it “The Whole World” because it’s trying to

express both how a parent is an infant’s entire universe, and how the converse can also be true: that a parent’s world can focus down to the infant, just as for the two women in this myth.

        The moral of the Judgement of Solomon is that genuine love is not selfish, but wants what’s best for the beloved.

        Also, half a baby is not, in fact, better than none.

        And here’s the big question: how should soldiers, law enforcement, and others respond when given an order that seems immoral?

        By the way, would you like to hear me read an excerpt from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns?  On May 1 I’ll be participating in a live, on-line group author reading by Strong Women-Strange Worlds.  I’ll be one of 6 speculative fiction authors who each get to read for 8 minutes in a fun, interactive, FREE on-line event open to anyone with an internet connection and an imagination.  As I said, it’s free, but registration is required to get the zoom link, so do check it out.  I’d love to see some A to Z folks in the audience!  You can find all the information and the link to register here.

[Picture: The Whole World, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2008 (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]

H is for Hades

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore, which is coming out this month!  All through April I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        The classical (Greek/Roman) myth of how Hades, god of the underworld, abducted Persephone, daughter of the goddess of harvest and fertility, has meant many things to many people.  I suggest you read my previous post about Persephone to see some of the range of interpretation and art inspired by the story, and if you need to read some various versions of the original myth, you can find them here.  As for my book, it includes two pieces of writing about the myth of Persephone, and they’re completely different takes on the story.  I wrote the poem first, in which I imagined the tale from the point of view of the Shades in the Underworld, bystanders who witnessed an injustice and failed to act.

     Three times we watch a seed to living lips,

     three times there is no cry, no warning, “Death.”

     We are no longer human and forget what we once were.

You can read the entire poem at my earlier post Persephone in Hades.

        My short story, on the other hand, came later after I began to think more about the personalities involved.  It’s from the point of view of Persephone, in which I’ve imagined her as a tough noir-style dame: a seductive, resourceful, manipulative, strong woman who knows how to get what she wants in a world not made for women, where you have to take matters into your own hands. 

     Most of the picture is in shadow, and if you want to know the whole story, you’ll have to look farther back.  Have you ever asked yourself what a grown woman was doing picking flowers all day?  Or for that matter, how a goddess could have been unaware of the implications of eating in the Underworld?  Of course you never asked.  No one ever does.  The party line is all innocent Maiden and pitiless brute, but there’s more to it than that…

        The thing about these ancient stories is that they’re not One Right Answer or one correct interpretation.  The reason they’ve stayed popular for so long is that they’re multi-layered and multi-faceted; every time you look at them from a different angle you see something else.  So there are a few traditional tales that have given rise to more than one re-imagining from me, and in those cases you should consider each piece to be independent: starting from the same point, but heading in a completely different direction.

        (As for this block print of Persephone, I tried to make it evoke a 1940s noir film poster.  I'm afraid that dramatic lighting is not my strong suit and I never get it exactly right, but at least I keep trying!)

        The moral of Hades is that if you see someone in trouble, be an up-stander!

        But also, things are not always as they appear.

        How do you feel about eating in the Underworld (or Faerie, which has similar mythology)?  Would you be able to resist that pomegranate?  Would you want to?

[Picture: Queen of the Underworld, rubber block print with watercolor by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]