Fear of the Deep by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

The first book-length collaboration between author Elisabeth Sharp McKetta and artist Troy Passey, Fear of the Deep joins the atmospheric artwork of Passey with thirty poetic fragments by McKetta, resulting in a book on the theme of the ocean and how words become lifeboats. Fear of the Deep is a call to live with courage and beauty in the face of mortality, and for that reason we will donate 10% of proceeds to Suicide Prevention Action Network of Idaho.

Hardcover

About the author

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta is a novelist, poet, biographer, teacher, and a mother of two. With a PhD on the intersections between fairy tales and autobiography, as well as a seven-year streak of writing weekly poems for strangers, she teaches writing for Harvard Extension School and Oxford Department for Continuing Education. She has authored ten books and co-edited one anthology. Her poetry and short work have been published widely, including in The Poetry Review and Real Simple; her work with myth and memoir has been spotlighted in Harvard Magazine. Her TEDx talk, “Edit Your Life like a Poem,” led to a personal growth guide to be published by Penguin Random House. Elisabeth lives with her sea-swimmer husband and her children.

Reviews

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated this brief but thoughtful book combining the words of McKetta and the artworks of Troy Passey. I've been acquainted with Passey for some time since we live in the same neighborhood and our children and/or grandchildren attended the same school. I've seen his art exhibited numerous times in the southwestern Idaho area.

I've always liked and have been intellectually stimulated by efforts, as in this book, to combine to different art forms, for example, prose poems, photos and poetry, films that include poetry, films with moving and still photos, etc. Sometimes those efforts are not very successful and you conclude that they are just two separate art forms sharing the same space but not necessarily interacting with and complementing each other. This effort seems to work better than most. I had not read any of McKetta writings before so I have nothing to compare her words here to, but Passey seems to be stretching into new and somewhat different artistic directions. That is also true of the companion volume "Fear of the Beast," which I also read since the new year began.

Visual artists and poets are always trying to present a refreshing new and original image, using words or brushes to communicate some feeling or mood. It's one thing to do it as an individual and another, much more challenging endeavor, to join with someone else and try to combine your vision with that of another person and create a coherent, worthwhile result. I found the efforts in these two books to be largely successful and am interested in seeing what they will do next.