Shades of the Other Shore

Cahier 20

Shades of the Other Shore
Jeffrey Greene and Ralph Petty

Shades of the Other Shore has come about through a collaboration between writer Jeffrey Greene and artist Ralph Petty. The two, writer and artist, share rural American beginnings, but have since discovered a new life in France, in sparsely populated French areas of Burgundy and the Ardèche, respectively. Their cahier offers a deep mapping of their adopted regions: Greene’s sequence of sketches and poems explores imagined correspondences between personal and historical ghosts tied to the seasons; Petty’s watercolours records a journey to the source of a local river. The result is a rich artistic translation, through their American sensibilities, of the landscapes of their chosen homes.

Jeffrey Greene is the author of four poetry collections, one volume of memoirs, and two nature books. His work has been supported through grants and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the Rinehart Fund; he was a winner of the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Randall Jarrell Award, and the ‘Discovery’/The Nation Award. His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker, Poetry, Nation, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, and the anthology Strangers in Paris. He directs creative writing at the American University of Paris.

Ralph Petty is a painter and sculptor living in France. He teaches drawing and painting at the American University of Paris and has exhibited in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia.