New Gift book, Passing Shadows, features color photos and haiku poems 
Passing Shadows, a collection of poignant three-line haiku poems, each illustrated with surprising photos and watercolor paintings, is the third of a series of joy-centered books by author and artist Mary O’Connor. Reflective and at times amusing, this latest book illustrates how to uncover unexpected moments of calmness through musings on ordinary, everyday objects. 
Finding a measure of quietude is what this book is all about. Full-color photographic as well as painted images, including four pet portraits, are offered as meditative stopping points, reasons to pause and to think of the subject’s lure. Accompanying each visual image is a verbal reflection expressed in the ancient Japanese poetic haiku format. 
Haikus use the barest minimum of words, structured in three lines of five-seven-five syllables, to depict a single moment in time through colorful mental imagery and natural world reference. Hallmark of a haiku is its delivery in just one breath of an unexpected sense of illumination. It is this ability to inspire fresh thought, to provide moments of ahhh, that the author delivers in Passing Shadows. 
O’Connor lives along the Connecticut shoreline, the source of inspiration for much of her creative work, which typically turns to nature for vision. As throughout the book’s content, she has a way offinding sunlight in the ordinary and drawing it out in surprising, thought-provoking observations. 
Take for example, the 15-word haiku “Birth.” Illustrated with the warm pink petal of a tulip lit by a shaft of sunlight, she simply writes, “life gives birth to spring/little trace of winter stress/just stretch marks of light.” 
Or, with a wry sense of humor, she shows a seagull pecking at a broken clam shell and comments, “the half-eaten dish/to be served tomorrow/blessed leftovers.” Or, when she catches the stare of a bad-humored grackle, she chides, “blinded by temper/ability to laugh gone/better to calm down.” 
It is such a focus on finding the lessons of the commonplace and expressing them in words that deliver insight, amusement, peace and calm that defines this book. 
All proceeds from the sale of Passing Shadows will be donated to the nonprofit Warrior Expeditions (www.warriorexpeditions.org) in support of its therapeutic programs that help veterans transition from their wartime experiences through long distance outdoor expeditions.

Passing Shadows: Images and Words of Inspiration

Literature & Fiction

O'Connor, Mary

Poetry

Station Square Media

John Davidson (Scottish Writers Series)

Scottish Academic Pr

Mary O'Connor and Katherine Tweedie tell the story of a dedicated artist in difficult circumstances whose working life spanned a Victorian upbringing in Hamilton, Ontario, and the witnessing of the first Soviet Five-Year Plan. The authors use feminist and historical questions as well as close readings of the photographs to relate Watkins' work to questions of gender, modernity, and visual culture. Watkins' modernism, which involved experimentation and a radical focus on form, transgressed boundaries of conventional, high-art subject matter. Her focus was daily life and her photographs, whether an exploration of the objects in her New York kitchen or the public and industrial spaces of Glasgow, Paris, Cologne, Moscow, and Leningrad in the 1930s, strike a balance between abstraction and an evocation of the everyday, offering a unique gendered perspective on modernism and modernity.

Seduced by Modernity: The Photography of Margaret Watkins

Arts & Photography

Tweedie, Katherine

Individual Artists

McGill-Queen's University Press

Life is Full of Sweet Spots: An Exploration of Joy

Explore and connect with the niches and nuances of the earth, the sea and sky, our bodies, minds and souls—the places where joy resides. Come away with new understanding of life and how its beauty and powers make us inwardly hum, how gardening or stargazing, touching something wild, listening to the sounds of silence, learning and loving, just simply being, all feed our emotional wellness and craving for joy. • Meet and read the personal reflections of over 40 artists and individuals from 20 states, Canada and Australia who share the ways and places in which they found fulfillment or simple contentment in life. • Find nuggets of insight, supportive research and notable quotes that will help illuminate your own sweet spots of life. • Stretch your mind and nurture your creativity through more than 150 listings and links to actual places, activities and resources for turning the discovery of joy into an everyday affair.

Life Is Full of Sweet Spots: An Exploration of Joy

Self-Help

Spiritual

Abbott Press

Explore and connect with the niches and nuances of the earth, the sea and sky, our bodies, minds and souls - the places where joy resides. Come away with new understanding of life and how its beauty and powers make us inwardly hum, how gardening or stargazing, touching something wild, listening to the sounds of silence, learning and loving, just simply being, all feed our emotional wellness and craving for joy. Meet and read the personal reflections of over 40 artists and individuals from 20 states, Canada and Australia who share the ways and places in which they found fulfillment or simple contentment in life. Find nuggets of insight, supportive research and notable quotes that will help illuminate your own sweet spots of life. Stretch your mind and nurture your creativity through more than 150 listings and links to actual places, activities and resources for turning the discovery of joy into an everyday affair.

AbbottPress

Free Rose Light is the wide-ranging story of the people and community of South Street Ministries, in Akron, Ohio, told in the style of the ministry--improvisational, risky, and present. As much as this is the story of South Street through O'Connor's experience of the organization, it is also an invitation to the reader by example. There is no set of conclusions or directions provided in this work, save for one: don't let anyone define your story. You claim your own story.

Free Rose Light: Stories around South Street (Series on Ohio History and Culture)

Biographies & Memoirs

The University Of Akron Press

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Books by O'Connor, Mary