Page last updated: September 24, 2021
All pages copyright © 2021 by Pinyon Publishing
RIDGES ~ Special Edition
Poems by Diane Marquart Moore
Paintings by Don Thornton
“In Ridges, Diane Moore creates a mystical space—a union of art, poetry, biography and nature—that honors her friend Don Thornton’s life and his vivid paintings of Louisiana’s Chenier Plain.”
—ROSE ANNE RAPHAEL, Artist and Writer, New Iberia, Louisiana
“Diane Moore’s Ridges sings of friendship born from a mutual love of nature and a shared Louisiana landscape. Interspersed with Don Thornton’s paintings, these poems resonate with a seasonal rhythm of birth and blossoming, death and decay. They remind us of the actual history of hurricanes in 1856 and 1893, giving us a Louisiana landscape always suffering from nature’s threats and menaces. Moore deftly blends natural and human, art and place, in this loving tribute to a fellow artist and friend, seeing in those ridges ‘the mud flats of old sufferings.’ Bravo to a seasoned poet whose works speak to all that makes us human.”
—MARY ANN WILSON, Professor Emerita of English, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
“Diane Moore’s empathetic poems expand readers’ understandings of Thornton’s paintings of the Chenier Plain. Her vivid words illustrate how live oak ridges’ ‘submerged and revived’ water levels affect plant and animal life as they adapt to this unique ecology.”
—KATHLEEN HAMMAN, Editor & Publisher, Creative Services, Sewanee, Tennessee
“A haunting collection of poems and paintings. Diane Moore crowns her work, so far, with this splendid merger of paintings, Don Thornton’s life, nature, and her own deep empathy.”
—JO ANN LORDAHL, Author of My Unveiled Face: A Memoir of a Free Woman and Princess Ruth: Love & Tragedy in Hawai’i
Diane Marquart Moore is a poet, journalist, book author, and regular blogger at A Word’s Worth, who divides her time between Sewanee, Tennessee and New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a regular contributor to the Pinyon Review, a journal of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, has published in The Southwestern Review at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana, Interdisciplinary Humanities, Xavier Review, Acadiana Profile Magazine, American Weave, Louisiana Historical Review, Trace, and other literary journals. She has been an associate editor for Acadiana Lifestyle Magazine, New Iberia, Louisiana, feature writer and columnist for The Daily Iberian, New Iberia, Louisiana, as well as a feature writer and book reviewer for The Yaddasht Haftegy in Ahwaz, Iran where she lived during the reign of the Shahanshah. Her young adult book, Martin’s Quest, was a finalist in the Heekins Foundation Award Contest and was selected to be on the supplementary reading list for gifted and talented students by the Louisiana Library Association. Heron Press received a grant from the Gheens Foundation of Louisiana to provide Martin’s Quest as a supplementary text for middle-grade and high school students in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes during the book’s publication year. Moore has written 928 posts and received 278,060 page views on her blog, A Word’s Worth. She is a retired archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana.
Don Thornton, painter, poet, sculptor, and teacher, painted pictures of the chenieres for thirty years when he visited his fishing camp near Dulac, Louisiana. He was born in Winnsboro, Louisiana, where he wrote that “he was immersed in and surrounded by nature and the delicate equilibrium of violence and tranquility in the woods.” Don graduated from Louisiana Polytechnic Institute in Ruston, Louisiana, worked as a roughneck on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, taught high school in Vivian, Louisiana and returned to college where he received an M.A. from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He served as Artist in Residence at the College of the Mainland in Texas. While living in Texas and as editor of Texas Portfolio, Don produced a book of poetry entitled Sounding. From 1967-1973, Don taught Drawing and Architectural Drawing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1985, Don published a book of poetry entitled A Walk on Water in which he wrote that the poems “expressed the concept of man bonding with the earth and was an act of faith in aesthetics, ecology, and the preservation of the planet Earth.” He taught gifted children in St. Martin Parish in south Louisiana and offered them an opportunity to be producers of literature, not just consumers, so that language became part of their creative lives. He edited, published, and distributed many student anthologies containing their creative writings and art. His own haiku poetry has appeared in the Japanese Museum of Haiku in Tokyo. Don’s paintings have appeared in one-man exhibits throughout the U.S., including the Houston Contemporary Art Museum, and he once designed sets for the Houston Ballet Company. He died of cancer in 2002, shortly after he held a one-man show of paintings about the Biblical figure, Job.
Standard Trade Paperback
Hand-Sewn
Dos-à-dos Edition
Dos-à-dos Blank Journal/Sketchbook
8 Folded Notecards with Envelopes
8 Panel Notecards with Envelopes
In addition to our standard trade paperback, we’re happy to offer a limited hand-sewn edition. The dos-à-dos structure honors the back-to-back nourishing relations among art, poetry, and friendship, so exemplified in Ridges.
The fine poetry and art might inspire you to write, draw, or correspond with friends. So we offer a Ridges blank journal/sketchbook and folded & panel notecards.
The 6-inch hand-sewn edition fits neatly in your hands, shown here with the 8-inch trade paperback behind it.
The dos-à-dos structure is constructed as two linked books. At the end of the first section, the book folds around and takes you through the second section.
Exquisite color reproduction of Don Thornton’s paintings in both editions.
The blank sketchbook has the same cover art and dimensions as the content version.
All of the limited edition offerings are printed on Mohawk USA-milled paper, FSC certified, 100% PCW, wind-power, carbon neutral.
The sketchbook pages and notecards are heavy-weight text and cover stock, respectively.
Uncoated and ideal for ink, pencil, crayon, etc.
Both folded and panel notecards are 4.5” x 6”. Each set includes 8 unique images of the cheniere paintings from the book. Envelopes included. The folded cards are blank inside. Information about the paintings and book are found on the backs of both versions.
Page last updated: September 24, 2021
All pages copyright © 2021 by Pinyon Publishing