April 22, 1981

Poet, children’s author, and Lecturer in English Nancy Willard spoke in Josselyn Living Room on “Truths the Devil Told Me: Poems and Parables.” Introducing her theme, said Nancy E. Frank ’82 in The Miscellany News, Lindbloom “told…a parable about writing poetry. The story concerned the devil’s school, hidden in the hills of Iceland, a school where magicians, poets and holy men learned their respective crafts. While the school exists only in Lindbloom’s imagination, she noted ‘though (the story’s) outside dress is false, I hope the inside is true and of such lies may we all be guilty.’”

“As Lindbloom brought her lecture to a close,” Frank wrote, “she returned to the devil’s school, to fulfill the ‘conditions set by the devil at the beginning of this lecture: Write a poem about the moon.’ Lindbloom read two of her poems inspired by the moon, ‘The Photographer and the Moon’ and ‘Night Light’: ‘It is time to turn on the moon./ It is time to live by a different light,’ she quoted—and she does.”

Nancy Willard Lindbloom’s collection of poems, A Visit to William Blake’s Inn (1981) won the prestigious Newbery Medal as the year’s most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature.