The Sins of Sweet Mortality: An Artistic Confluence

In The Sins of Sweet Mortality, Marilyn Fox and Nancye McCrary combine poetry and painting, juxtaposing voice, image, and sensation, to create a multi-layered collection that readers will view as rich, textured, and full of possibility.

Poetry and painting communicate and illustrate the long history of humanity. They tell the story of our journey through the centuries, documenting in artistic forms both the ordinary and the extraordinary in human experience. Both aspire for a kind of beauty that can bring tears to our eyes. Both aim far beyond what educational theorist Maxine Greene called "the anesthesia of daily human activity." As the poet Wallace Stevens opined, because poetry and painting operate at the intersection of imagination and reality, these art forms assume a prophetic stature and become a "vital assertion of self."

In this book we explore how assertion of self in confluent poetry and painting can enhance the reading and viewing experience while maintaining the friction of creative independence. The intent is to awaken the reader/observer to imagine what may not be immediately obvious in either language or image alone. The convergence of both elements-the visual and the literary-are layered like a palimpsest, inviting the audience to uncover other worlds.

Born and raised in Dayton, Kentucky, a small town on the hook of the Ohio River, poet Marilyn Fox writes from the deep. Educated in literature as well as in science and medicine, Fox uses images from the natural world, anatomy, physics, and daily experience to plumb the depths of guilt, grief, longing, infatuation, and loss. Fox's work is personal in a way that inspires feelings about and reflection on one's own lived experiences. Since retirement, she has returned to Kentucky where she now lives in harmony with the natural world.---Painter Nancye McCrary's passion for visual art is woven throughout her life and professional careers. Educated in fine arts (drawing, painting, and printmaking), teacher education, and instructional systems design, McCrary has taught visual art in p-12 public and private schools, as well as colleges and universities. Her work has been exhibited across the United States in both solo and group shows. She paints in a studio on her farm in central Kentucky.