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The Light's Beloved: Poems of Mary in Paintings
Judith Sornberger

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PROJECT STATUS: This book has been proposed as a project and is now seeking team members. Using the links at left, apply to join the team and help make this book happen. This collection of poems addresses and seeks to interact with paintings depicting the woman called the Virgin Mary. Although the New Testament offers scant information of Mary's life, artists of subsequent ages haven't seemed to be able to get enough of painting her, relying on apocryphal sources, folk tales, and their own imaginations to fill in the blanks. The forty or so poems in this collection engage with Mary as both historical woman and mythical figure as depicted in paintings. The collection begins with her girlhood, and winds through her roles as the chosen one, the young mother, the pieta, and the queen of heaven. The poems respond to and enlarge on themes from paintings by well-known artists such as Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Massaccio, Vermeer and Van Gogh, as well as lesser known painters such as 19th century artist Lilly Martin Spencer and contemporary artists and illustrators such as Carol Mothner, Kamal Youssef, Kathleen Ace and Julie Vivas. One section focuses on the goddess-like paintings of Polish artist Wislawa Kwiatkowska. The collection also considers art by unknown southwestern artists and by Peruvian tapestry artists who created arpilleras in remembrance of those who have been "disappeared." The poems in this collection--like the paintings that inspired them--are diverse in tone, sometimes addressing Mary as she appears in the painting, other times musing on her plight. Some are humorous, most are more serious. However, all of the poems seek to understand Mary from a contemporary perspective, even as they view her through artwork ranging across centuries. Notes on the Project: A number of these poems have been published individually in literary journals; therefore, I am confident that they can stand on their own. However, it would be divine (pardon the pun) to include reproductions of some of the paintings that inspired them.