Elisavietta Ritchie

Navigational Hazards Elisavietta Ritchie

Two noted Maryland authors collaborate to produce Navigational Hazards, an intense collection of photography and poetry. Elisavietta Ritchie and Donald Grady Shomette transport us to the tidewater peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. Image after image, word after word, flow from the pages: duck blinds, cemeteries, sandpipers, tides, turtles, shipwrecks, sirens. Ritchie and Shomette know the lower western shore of Maryland. They view their subject through a single lens.

OSPREY - "this fish hawk builds a scraggly nest of sticks atop the channel marker"

TIDAL QUESTIONS - "the sea is a generous grave"

ON WEATHERING GALES - "whether to rig the sea anchor from stem or from stern depends on the cut of the hull"

NAVIGATIONAL HAZARDS - "I never warned you: falling in love is not as simple as tumbling from a canoe"