ENCHANTING THE ORDINARY: Poems & Photographs by Libby Falk Jones
Publication Date: April 22, 2025
Paperback, 62 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-95-0
In Enchanting the Ordinary, author and educator Libby Falk Jones combines her tandem pursuits of writing and photography, pairing poem and image on facing pages to create a “conversation.” Not truly ekphrastic in that the poems are not written in response to the photographs, nor conventionally illustrated in that, likewise, the photographs are not intended to convey the same subject matter as the words, these twinnings encourage the reader/viewer to combine “separate energies to bring into being a new creation” in order to foster “awareness of the beauty and mystery of the ordinary, to be present to inner and outer worlds, to grow.”
Praise for Libby Falk Jones & Enchanting the Ordinary
In this book one plus one is not only more than two, but also elevates the flight of perception into “some other world” where the reader celebrates the abundance of leaps among words, shapes, colors, and meaning alongside the complex connections between them. Stunning and emotionally engaging in equal measure, the poems and the images arrest, engage, and educate in the gentlest of ways. This could be accomplished only by a creator with decades of dedicated practice, patience, humility, and love. “At the heart of both arts is seeing,” says Libby Falk Jones in the introduction. In Enchanting the Ordinary, I see the heart of art.
—Katerina Stoykova, author of Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House
Libby Falk Jones is that rare thing, a master of not one but two art forms: poetry and photography. They rarely appear together, but in Enchanting the Ordinary, Jones has set them side by side in pairs, to brilliant, mutually illuminating effect. Often the photographs register as half-rhymes of the poems, or as variations on loosely construed themes. A poem about constellations in the night sky is paired with a photograph of droplets of water dangling from spider webs. A villanelle about kneading dough is followed by a photograph of a rock formation elaborate enough to have been formed, well, by hand. Almost equally in the poems and photographs, light goes about its business, revealing, reflecting, leaving a wake of shadows. At its core, this exquisite book is about seeing, all the ways we can.
—Kevin Nance, author of Even If: Photographs and Haiku & Midnight: Photographs and Haiku
About the Author
Libby Falk Jones is a life-long writer of poems, stories, and essays. She has authored or co-authored four books of poems, and her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in more than 30 journals and anthologies. She’s a member of Bluegrass Writers Studio (Eastern Kentucky University) and a past president of Kentucky State Poetry Society. Co-director of Coming of Age, a grant-funded writing project for Kentucky women over 60, she serves as a writing coach at Western Kentucky University’s Mountain Workshops (photojournalism), as creative writing instructor at New Opportunity School for Women, and as Writer Workshops Coordinator for Shadelandhouse Modern Press.
She holds degrees from Duke University (BA, history) and Stony Brook University (MA and PhD, English). An Emerita Professor of English at Berea College, she’s taught a wide range of courses in writing and literature, including creative writing, contemplative writing, experimental writing, nature writing, journalism and technical writing, and critical and research writing. She’s taken students to study writing, literature, and photography in the Southwest and abroad (Austria, Denmark, France, and Turkey) as well as serving a term as Visiting Lecturer at National University of Ireland in Galway.
Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries in Kentucky and Louisiana and are part of the permanent Healing Art collections at several hospitals in the Bluegrass and in Baton Rouge. “Begin Beneath Your Feet: a Journey Through Four Lands,” an exhibit of more than 100 of her photographs from Japan, India, Iceland, and Ireland, was featured in the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, 2020-22. She has published critical essays and made numerous presentations on contemplative seeing.
Jones lives with her husband, Roger, also a writer, in Berea, KY, where she is working on two new poetry collections and a book on teaching. For more information, see www.libbyfalkjones.com.
Publication Date: April 22, 2025
Paperback, 62 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-95-0
In Enchanting the Ordinary, author and educator Libby Falk Jones combines her tandem pursuits of writing and photography, pairing poem and image on facing pages to create a “conversation.” Not truly ekphrastic in that the poems are not written in response to the photographs, nor conventionally illustrated in that, likewise, the photographs are not intended to convey the same subject matter as the words, these twinnings encourage the reader/viewer to combine “separate energies to bring into being a new creation” in order to foster “awareness of the beauty and mystery of the ordinary, to be present to inner and outer worlds, to grow.”
Praise for Libby Falk Jones & Enchanting the Ordinary
In this book one plus one is not only more than two, but also elevates the flight of perception into “some other world” where the reader celebrates the abundance of leaps among words, shapes, colors, and meaning alongside the complex connections between them. Stunning and emotionally engaging in equal measure, the poems and the images arrest, engage, and educate in the gentlest of ways. This could be accomplished only by a creator with decades of dedicated practice, patience, humility, and love. “At the heart of both arts is seeing,” says Libby Falk Jones in the introduction. In Enchanting the Ordinary, I see the heart of art.
—Katerina Stoykova, author of Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House
Libby Falk Jones is that rare thing, a master of not one but two art forms: poetry and photography. They rarely appear together, but in Enchanting the Ordinary, Jones has set them side by side in pairs, to brilliant, mutually illuminating effect. Often the photographs register as half-rhymes of the poems, or as variations on loosely construed themes. A poem about constellations in the night sky is paired with a photograph of droplets of water dangling from spider webs. A villanelle about kneading dough is followed by a photograph of a rock formation elaborate enough to have been formed, well, by hand. Almost equally in the poems and photographs, light goes about its business, revealing, reflecting, leaving a wake of shadows. At its core, this exquisite book is about seeing, all the ways we can.
—Kevin Nance, author of Even If: Photographs and Haiku & Midnight: Photographs and Haiku
About the Author
Libby Falk Jones is a life-long writer of poems, stories, and essays. She has authored or co-authored four books of poems, and her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in more than 30 journals and anthologies. She’s a member of Bluegrass Writers Studio (Eastern Kentucky University) and a past president of Kentucky State Poetry Society. Co-director of Coming of Age, a grant-funded writing project for Kentucky women over 60, she serves as a writing coach at Western Kentucky University’s Mountain Workshops (photojournalism), as creative writing instructor at New Opportunity School for Women, and as Writer Workshops Coordinator for Shadelandhouse Modern Press.
She holds degrees from Duke University (BA, history) and Stony Brook University (MA and PhD, English). An Emerita Professor of English at Berea College, she’s taught a wide range of courses in writing and literature, including creative writing, contemplative writing, experimental writing, nature writing, journalism and technical writing, and critical and research writing. She’s taken students to study writing, literature, and photography in the Southwest and abroad (Austria, Denmark, France, and Turkey) as well as serving a term as Visiting Lecturer at National University of Ireland in Galway.
Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries in Kentucky and Louisiana and are part of the permanent Healing Art collections at several hospitals in the Bluegrass and in Baton Rouge. “Begin Beneath Your Feet: a Journey Through Four Lands,” an exhibit of more than 100 of her photographs from Japan, India, Iceland, and Ireland, was featured in the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, 2020-22. She has published critical essays and made numerous presentations on contemplative seeing.
Jones lives with her husband, Roger, also a writer, in Berea, KY, where she is working on two new poetry collections and a book on teaching. For more information, see www.libbyfalkjones.com.
Publication Date: April 22, 2025
Paperback, 62 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-95-0
In Enchanting the Ordinary, author and educator Libby Falk Jones combines her tandem pursuits of writing and photography, pairing poem and image on facing pages to create a “conversation.” Not truly ekphrastic in that the poems are not written in response to the photographs, nor conventionally illustrated in that, likewise, the photographs are not intended to convey the same subject matter as the words, these twinnings encourage the reader/viewer to combine “separate energies to bring into being a new creation” in order to foster “awareness of the beauty and mystery of the ordinary, to be present to inner and outer worlds, to grow.”
Praise for Libby Falk Jones & Enchanting the Ordinary
In this book one plus one is not only more than two, but also elevates the flight of perception into “some other world” where the reader celebrates the abundance of leaps among words, shapes, colors, and meaning alongside the complex connections between them. Stunning and emotionally engaging in equal measure, the poems and the images arrest, engage, and educate in the gentlest of ways. This could be accomplished only by a creator with decades of dedicated practice, patience, humility, and love. “At the heart of both arts is seeing,” says Libby Falk Jones in the introduction. In Enchanting the Ordinary, I see the heart of art.
—Katerina Stoykova, author of Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House
Libby Falk Jones is that rare thing, a master of not one but two art forms: poetry and photography. They rarely appear together, but in Enchanting the Ordinary, Jones has set them side by side in pairs, to brilliant, mutually illuminating effect. Often the photographs register as half-rhymes of the poems, or as variations on loosely construed themes. A poem about constellations in the night sky is paired with a photograph of droplets of water dangling from spider webs. A villanelle about kneading dough is followed by a photograph of a rock formation elaborate enough to have been formed, well, by hand. Almost equally in the poems and photographs, light goes about its business, revealing, reflecting, leaving a wake of shadows. At its core, this exquisite book is about seeing, all the ways we can.
—Kevin Nance, author of Even If: Photographs and Haiku & Midnight: Photographs and Haiku
About the Author
Libby Falk Jones is a life-long writer of poems, stories, and essays. She has authored or co-authored four books of poems, and her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in more than 30 journals and anthologies. She’s a member of Bluegrass Writers Studio (Eastern Kentucky University) and a past president of Kentucky State Poetry Society. Co-director of Coming of Age, a grant-funded writing project for Kentucky women over 60, she serves as a writing coach at Western Kentucky University’s Mountain Workshops (photojournalism), as creative writing instructor at New Opportunity School for Women, and as Writer Workshops Coordinator for Shadelandhouse Modern Press.
She holds degrees from Duke University (BA, history) and Stony Brook University (MA and PhD, English). An Emerita Professor of English at Berea College, she’s taught a wide range of courses in writing and literature, including creative writing, contemplative writing, experimental writing, nature writing, journalism and technical writing, and critical and research writing. She’s taken students to study writing, literature, and photography in the Southwest and abroad (Austria, Denmark, France, and Turkey) as well as serving a term as Visiting Lecturer at National University of Ireland in Galway.
Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries in Kentucky and Louisiana and are part of the permanent Healing Art collections at several hospitals in the Bluegrass and in Baton Rouge. “Begin Beneath Your Feet: a Journey Through Four Lands,” an exhibit of more than 100 of her photographs from Japan, India, Iceland, and Ireland, was featured in the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, 2020-22. She has published critical essays and made numerous presentations on contemplative seeing.
Jones lives with her husband, Roger, also a writer, in Berea, KY, where she is working on two new poetry collections and a book on teaching. For more information, see www.libbyfalkjones.com.