It's credited to Pamela Dean, now Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennett.

-JD

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Sorry, Bennet, one "t".

-JD

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Where did you search for this? I did a google search for the more distictive phrasing, and didn't find anything...

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Googled the two phoenix line, found this quoted in another LJ with author name attached, googled name and found author works in fantasy.

-JD

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That's her legal surname, but her working name is still just Pamela Dean.

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You know, I haven't actually read the book in which this poem appears (which means it must be "Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary", since I've read all her others, I believe), but as soon as I saw it I thought, "Gosh, that sounds like one of Pamela's." I memorized her poem from Tam Lin, "The Atheist in Doubt":

The winter shrills its dirge self satisfied,
And all is black, or gray, or ragged brown,
And all the world in rags its bread has cried,
And begged the gates of that unheeding town
Men once called heaven.
Such a time as this
Must make our reasoned doubt a certainty:
We see the universe just as it is,
Not veiled by miracle of bud or tree.
But even as I watch the senseless sky
Cracked hideous in the water at my feet,
Dread rumors crowd me, dark forebodings: I
Remember, as improbable as spring,
To this abyss where Night and Chaos meet,
The star, the cup, the cross: that tale's ending.

Isn't that fabulous?

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Oh my.... There's definitely another one to memorize.

I wonder if I should try her books again--I remember what I did read being so creepy to me that I failed to try any of her other stuff. Hmmm.

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Like I said, I haven't read the book you did (if it's the one I think it is, about the three sisters who riddle with the Devil or his sorcerous equivalent), but I would readily recommend anything else of hers. I've always found her work to be deftly written, subtly humorous, and, in its sombre passages, much more wistful and haunting than creepy. (I have almost no tolerance for horror, and I don't care for gothic supernaturalism either; so if she tended to be an author who suffered from Dark Gods, as Lewis put it, I would hurry off in the other direction.)

If you can get your hands on the Secret Country trilogy (The Secret Country, The Hidden Land, and The Whim of the Dragon) or The Dubious Hills, those would be a good place to start. I'm not quite as fond of Tam Lin (in spite of the poem-memorizing), but all the same it stands up well to re-reading and I know a lot of people (especially literature geeks, of whom I once thought I was one, but now I know that I am merely a dilettante) who unconditionally adore it.

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(if it's the one I think it is, about the three sisters who riddle with the Devil or his sorcerous equivalent

That sounds about right. Of course, I was 11 or 12 when I read it, so I would probably not find it at all creepy now. :-)

*notes down titles for next library trip* Thank you!

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The first thing I thought of when I saw this poem was C.S. Lewis -- the first several lines expand on a famous quote of his: "We picture lovers face to face but friends side by side; their eyes look ahead."

I really like this extension of the idea, though. Great poem.

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I know, the first thing I thought of was Lewis' The Four Loves. Actually, looking at Pamela Dean's other poem in the comments, here, it's vaguely Lewisesque as well. I have to wonder how much influence Lewis had on her.

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