Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night
by Joyce Sidman, illustrations by Rick Allen
Rick Allen’s luminous prints were the first to catch my eye when I picked up this poetry/picture book. Of the multistep woodcut and hand-tinted gouache process he wrote, “There are definitely faster methods of making a picture, but few more enjoyable in a backwards sort of way.” And Sidman’s poems contain striking imagery of dusk and night in the outdoors, capturing the beauty of ordinary creatures and setting them out for readers to experience. From “Love Poem of the Primrose Moth” come some of my favorite lines: At dawn, I fold my sherbet-colored wings / and become / a primrose. Like her earlier Songs of the Water Boatman, Sidman includes sidebars chock-full of information about the landscape and creatures featured in each poem.
