Dread and Splendor

"How might beauty and spectacle, in art and writing, make us think with complex urgency about the environmental crisis? Painter Irene Christensen and poet Eileen P. Kennedy, who met at an artist's residency in Costa Rica, address this challenge in this stunning collaboration. Christensen, from Norway, is a surrealist and colorist; her gorgeous paintings depict women in mythical settings, confronting a global climate crisis that becomes the focus of Kennedy's ekphrastic poems. Kennedy sets the elegiac tone in 'Perilous Journey': 'I see two things at once: the heads of five women and ocean / ocean unabetted by moonlight caressesâ.â.â.â' Kennedy's previous book dealt with lovers facing great loss during a ravaging illness, and here again she writes with bewilderment and passion inspired by the women Christensen paints with wide-open eyes."  -Cheryl J. Fish, Professor Emerita, English, BMCC/CUNY; author of Off the Yoga Mat, Crater and Tower, and The Sauna is Full of Maids

"Dread and Splendor is a collaboration between two accomplished women who join their individual art forms to create a many-leveled connection to hearts and minds. Eileen Kennedy's ekphrastic poems are written in response to Irene Christensen's surrealistic paintings. They have created a unique and important book for our troubled times, offering insight and healing." -Ginger Andro, artist, curator and vice president, Sculptors Guild, New York