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History is a yahrzeit candle
Jane Yolen has died. Her books were some of the first I read. Even with my library in storage, I can see several of her titles just by turning my head. Her shadow sisters got into my Jewish demons. She ushered me through the corridors of the sea. I had the fortune of sharing some panels with her; I did have the chance to tell her how much of my sense of story she had shaped. Tam Lin and Commander Toad, White Jenna and Merlin, dragons and owls and selkies and golems and cats and always, unsentimentally, words. Which remain, but it still feels like a great light blown out.
I saw a sailor once
shed his skin
as quickly as a crab
sloughs its shell.
He danced alone,
easy in his bones,
amid the coral memories
of his sunken ship.
When he opened his mouth,
little colored fish
swam in and out,
avoiding his brittle teeth,
his stripped and shining jaw.
They were quick and bright
as laughter,
running their zigzag course
through the silent syncopation
of the sea.
—Jane Yolen, "Metamorphosis" (1982)
I saw a sailor once
shed his skin
as quickly as a crab
sloughs its shell.
He danced alone,
easy in his bones,
amid the coral memories
of his sunken ship.
When he opened his mouth,
little colored fish
swam in and out,
avoiding his brittle teeth,
his stripped and shining jaw.
They were quick and bright
as laughter,
running their zigzag course
through the silent syncopation
of the sea.
—Jane Yolen, "Metamorphosis" (1982)
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(The poem is lovely... she was so good...)
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*hugs*
(The poem is lovely... she was so good...)
It's from her collection Neptune Rising: Songs and Tales of the Undersea Folk (1982) which I adored from the first time I saw it in my elementary school library. In college I tracked down my own copy. It made me hungry like the sea itself.
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So many of her books already are. Dove Isabeau. Briar Rose.
Her Dragon's Blood was one of my lost and found books, the ones where you encounter a book briefly then forget title and author and (if you're lucky) track it down years later. I still associate it with the amazement of finding it and realising yes, this one, that was it.
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But man, what a life of writing and telling stories. Her memory for a blessing, and it will be remembered because of what she told.
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Her memory for a blessing.
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That's a lovely poem (I've read a bunch of her books, but less of her poetry).
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I would list books all night if I tried to remember her by titles. I dreamed once of reading one of her novels when I was still searching for it in my waking life. She was so many different kinds of land and sea and space.
*hugs*
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*hugs*
It's true. Her books are.
Her Dragon's Blood was one of my lost and found books, the ones where you encounter a book briefly then forget title and author and (if you're lucky) track it down years later. I still associate it with the amazement of finding it and realising yes, this one, that was it.
It's so hard for me to remember whether I read Dragon's Blood before its seed-story "Cockfight." I remember finding the sequels in the public library in middle school when I had had no idea of them. I'm so glad it refound you.
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That's neat!
But man, what a life of writing and telling stories. Her memory for a blessing, and it will be remembered because of what she told.
She was always going to become a story.
*hugs*
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It was early pearl-grit. Amen.
*hugs*
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I was not sure at first which of you had written the poem, but did sort it out before the attribution: the flavor of the salt was different.
I was greatly privileged to work with her when she had her editor hat on, and to be in some wise her friend. The world is the wrong shape just now.
P.
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You're welcome, although I am sorry for the occasion. She had new books out as recently as the last couple of years, so I made sure to know that there was a living writer behind them; I was glad she was in the world and still making stories of and for it. I can remember reading so many of them for the first time and I can remember revisiting them.
Her memory for a blessing.
*hugs*
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*hugs*
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How else are we still here?
*hugs*
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*hugs*
That's a lovely poem (I've read a bunch of her books, but less of her poetry).
Many of her collections mixed short fiction with poetry, which if I think about it is almost certainly how I absorbed the idea that it could be done. She published straight poetry collections and novels in verse, too. I had by no means read her complete works.
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And much loved.
*hugs*
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I am still having trouble with the latter. I never did read the last novel of Diana Wynne Jones.
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That's wonderful. Thank you for telling me.
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*hugs*
I didn't discover that one until college! I inherited it from my god-aunt. She had a library of science fiction and fantasy that I loved when I visited her. My memory insists that I read Yolen's Here There Be Dragons for the first time in her house.
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It closes a collection of hers that was a talisman of my childhood and a benchmark of the sea and I thought of it when I heard that she had changed states.
I was not sure at first which of you had written the poem, but did sort it out before the attribution: the flavor of the salt was different.
I had an echo in my head the other night; I couldn't place it. Tonight I realized it was from "The Sleep of Trees," which I would have read first in Storyteller (1992). I can't even tell whether she's visible in my language, but I cited her last month when bidding for a panel at Readercon. Her sea was congenial to me.
I was greatly privileged to work with her when she had her editor hat on, and to be in some wise her friend. The world is the wrong shape just now.
How wonderful that you had that connection. I managed to publish one of her poems before my tenure ended at Strange Horizons, but communicated only through her agent. The world is extremely off true.
*hugs*
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