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Endorsements
“It is often said that taking photos teaches us to see, and here, Karen shows us that love is everywhere if we just open our eyes. Marjorie’s thoughtful, heartfelt poems take all our grief over darkness and loss and expose it back to the light.”
—Lorette C. Luzajic, artis and writer; editor of The Ekphrastic Review
“Via an original and provocative tapestry of contemplative prose and intimate imagery, these two artists take both reader and viewer on a journey laced with personal experiences that ring true with the song of universality. This sojourn reminds us it is possible to witness the Cosmos in a drop of pond water or in the surface texture of a weathered fragment of granite. The wonderfully reductive nature of both word and picture herein remind us that less is most often more, that the unadorned will sometimes bring us to that place where greater realizations dwell. In this realm the poet and photographer have combined talents and successfully set a stage for quiet contemplations that are both worldly and private. Opening one's heart is indeed an act of bravery and love.”
—Greg Mort, internationally recognized artist with work in many prominent private and public collections, including the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the White House
“What enchantment to discover the heart—that most ancient of symbols—in the strikingly fresh and poignant depictions of these exquisite poems and photographs. The pages of this collection fall open to so many of our stories, both individual and collective. The hearts invoked from fairy tales that beat deep in our psyches are joined here by heart transplants, by the national tragedy of George Floyd’s heart stopped by cruelty, by hearts quarantined in windows, and by a cracked stone heart mourning the Earth. These poems and photographs inspire and reflect one another, magically creating the lub-dub of a single heart beating. Reading Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For, we hear our own hearts speaking and being spoken for.”
—Judith Sornberger, author of Angel Chimes: Poems of Advent and Christmas
Listen to the Double Book Launch (at Redheaded Stepchild Reading Series) with photographer Karen Elias HERE!
“Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For is a luminous book that combines Marjorie Maddox’s poems with Karen Elias’s photography to create a reflective, silvery, sad and yet hopeful artistic experience. Since the photos and poems are symbiotic, quotation does not do the work justice. there is such a significant interplay between poems and photos….” —Janet McCain for Mom Egg Review
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Reading of Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For and for Begin with a Question: click HERE!
Anna Cotton interviews Marjorie Maddox about Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For
Verse-Virtual Ekphrastic Reading with Brent Terry and Lorette C. Luzajic: click HERE!
“…It is with grace and skill that Maddox cradles that idea of brokenness—in physical body, through domestic abuse, during the pandemic, in our environment, and with social justice issues. Somehow she manages to hold both joy and sorrow in her hands. She reminds us to appreciate hopeful moments that may quell fears when the “night creeps close on dead leaves” (Chopping Block/Heart Waiting for Danger) or when we recognize that we live in a “year of shifting/sorrows” (Bury Our Heart/Fractured Heart). She embraces the positive: a “single blue jay dotting/the drab day with color” (Quarantine/Two Hearts, Two Windows)—“the tattooed rays of one more orbit/of earth around a sun that says “Hold on,/hold on, hold on.”” (Heart, Lichen, Stone/Heart Holding On).
It is with this beautiful, insightful book of poems and photographs that we are able to hold on. To do otherwise would be to look away from the perfections and imperfections of the heart and of the stone….I celebrate Poet Marjorie Maddox and Photographer Karen Elias in this collaboration.”-Pamela R. Anderson-Bartholet in South 85
“….The two art forms, poetry and photography, work in tandem to create a form of visual music, a sweet conversation that allows both parties to come to the fore, creating a blend more powerful than either would be alone.
This is not a book to read. This is a book to inhale, to infuse into your own heart and make it your own. You do not read this book. You experience it.”-David Marvin in Scintilla
Listed at Jama Kim Rattigan’s Nine Cool Things on a Tuesday (See # 7!)
Photography exhibit, book signing, and reading at Lycoming Arts Gallery in Williamsport, PA.
“Living within the Art: a Poet and Photographer Discuss Their Collaboration-Marjorie Maddox and Karen Elias” in The Ekphrastic Review
NPR Interview with Erica Funke and Mindy Cronk on WVIA
Listen to the Art of Questions Double Book Celebration with Guest Poets HERE!
“In Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For, Marjorie Maddox and Karen Elias collaborate to create a gracefully written, visually entrancing journey….” For the full review by Anne Kaylor for Main Street Rag, click HERE.
Review at Misfit Magazine: “Rarely have two artists, working in their different fields, achieved such a total balance of form, function and harmony of purpose as Maddox and Elias have achieved in this collection….The heart may be broken, shattered, discarded, or repurposed, but the chain of being goes on in art and in words and in images. Heartfelt. All of it.”
Student article at Lock Haven University’s newspaper The Eagle Eye